Hell yeah, guys. Football is so back.
On Sunday, we got all of the following:
—more points than in any Week 1 since anybody’s been counting
—a double-digit upset
—a double-digit comeback
—a game that came down to one final win-or-lose play
—the ability to point and laugh at the Dallas Cowboys
What more could you ask for?
– Rodger Sherman
Today’s Lineup
There were A LOT of points in the NFL this week
A backwards pass that wasn’t
A rare day of New York wins
📈 RIP, Defenses 📈
Do you guys remember “defenses?” Those 11 guys who would stand on the field and try to stop the guys with the football from scoring? I never really liked them at the time, but now that they’re gone, I kind of miss them.
Week 1 of the 2026 NFL season has been the highest-scoring Week 1 in NFL history. (It’s one of those things where a bunch of outlets have reported it’s “the highest-scoring Week 1 since 1970,” but it’s really because the databases only go back to 1970, and not because they were going crazy on offense in 1948.)
The 96 combined points between the Bears and Panthers were the most in any Week 1 game in NFL history. Twenty-nine of 30 teams to play so far have hit double-digits, and the one that didn’t is the team that was on a 16-hour, 9,000-mile flight the day before.
So far, there have been 15 games with a combined 750 points. (Exactly 50 per game, 25 per team. Neat!) That’s higher than the highest-scoring Week 1 ever (49.4 points per game in 2012), and higher than the highest-scoring season ever (49.6 points per game in 2020, the year when everything was normal).
My plan was to write about one of the big offensive breakouts and highlight how they did it … but too many teams were too good at offense.
The Chicago Bears scored 59 points, the 29th-highest single-game scoring output in NFL history and the most points the Bears have scored in a game since 1980. They ran for 291 yards and six touchdowns. They also allowed 37 points to the Panthers — you know 59-37 was scorigami — but we’ll deal with that later.
I’m not sure how to handle seeing the Chicago Bears, a team that has spent decades putting together gruesome defenses and grim offenses, become an electric scoring powerhouse like this. It’s like seeing my dog walk up and open the fridge door with her paw. You weren’t supposed to be able to do that!
Also, I feel like it must have been hard for Caleb Williams to keep a straight face when he told Panthers coach Dave Canales, “Great defense, man,” in the post-game handshake huddle.
The Bills and Texans had a stretch of drives that went touchdown-touchdown-touchdown-touchdown-punt-touchdown-touchdown in a 36-31 Buffalo win. And it was almost a 38-36 Texans win, but C.J. Stroud was sacked twice and fumbled after getting near the Buffalo goal line in the last minute.
The Ravens scored 41 points and averaged 7.9 yards per play with new offensive coordinator Declan Doyle, the Bears’ offensive coordinator last year. It’s actually the sixth time they’ve scored exactly 41 points in the last three seasons, but they’ve never scored 42 or more.
One of the lower-scoring games of Sunday, Cowboys-Giants, may have actually had the most effective offenses — they just moved the ball so methodically, the score didn’t get high. The teams converted 17 of 22 third-down attempts and scored on every single drive in the second half, but the final score was only 28-20. (More on this later.)
If these numbers hold, it continues an upward trend. The past two seasons rank No. 2 and No. 3 in NFL history in points per drive, behind 2020 (the year when everything was normal). In 2026, so far, teams are averaging 2.23 points per drive, which would set the NFL record.
Normally, teams are worse at scoring in Week 1. The offenses haven’t gotten in sync yet. It’s basically extended preseason. It’s historically the second-lowest scoring week of the season, behind Week 11.
So it could be a fluke … or this season could demolish offensive records.
So why is this happening? There have been several massive league-wide trends that were instantly notable in Week 1. The first is an absolutely massive increase in snaps where the quarterback takes the ball from under center. According to Shawn Syed of Sumer Sports, 42 percent of snaps so far have been under center, up from 29.2 percent in the 2025 season, with 10 of the 28 teams that played before SNF showing an increase of at least 10 percent.
And, according to Ryan Paganetti, there were huge jumps in usage of three-tight-end sets (9 percent of snaps were out of 13 personnel, up from 5.4 percent last year and usage of fullbacks (12.4 percent of snaps featured fullbacks, up from 7.5 percent last year).
Football is cyclical. For the past 15-20 years, stuff like taking snaps under center or using a fullback felt like outdated football concepts from eras when teams sought to establish the run. Over the 2000s and 2010s, as teams realized passing the ball was more efficient, they dropped into shotgun sets and played with 3-4 wide receivers at a time.
But teams have now built themselves around stopping the pass, playing more defensive backs and fewer linebackers. It’s a lot harder for them to stop the run. Teams that can successfully run play-action passing attacks out of heavy, under-center looks have basically unlocked a cheat code — to have any hope of stopping the run, lighter defenses have to commit hard, and if the QB then pulls the ball out and throws, they’re in big trouble.
It’s beautiful. In 2026, NFL offenses are playing all the big bruising fullbacks and tight ends from the 1980s while still putting up points with all the efficiency of the modern NFL. It’s gonna be a great season, unless you’re a defensive coordinator.
Sponsored by Fantasy Genius
Fantasy Genius of the Week
Fantasy Genius is the must-have fantasy football tool to unlock the lore, stories, and stats of YOUR league. Every week, we’re going to highlight the most interesting player of the week, so you can be a Fantasy Genius too.
This week: Jahmyr Gibbs, 29 carries for 156 yards and two touchdowns
Are you a Fantasy Genius for having the #1 pick in your league’s draft? You kinda just did the obvious thing, right? But either way: If you have Jahmyr Gibbs, you’re going to be feeling pretty smart all season long.
From 2023 to 2025, Gibbs shared the Lions’ backfield with David Montgomery. Across those three seasons, Gibbs finished second among RBs in fantasy points, and Montgomery finished 14th. When the Lions led the NFL in rushing touchdowns in 2023, Montgomery had 13 and Gibbs had 10. When the Lions finished second in rushing touchdowns in the NFL in 2024, Gibbs had 16 and Montgomery had 10.
This year, Montgomery left to be the lead back for the Houston Texans. (He looks great, btw — he had three touchdowns in Houston’s loss to Buffalo.) Who replaced Montgomery as Gibbs’ backfield partner? Nobody. Jahmyr Gibbs is now backed up by More Jahmyr Gibbs. They have gone from Sonic and Knuckles to Whoops! All Sonic!
Gibbs had a career-high 29 rushing attempts for a league-high 15 in Detroit’s 31-30 win over New Orleans. There were only five games all last season where any running back had more than 29 carries. Throw in his five receptions, and he had 34 touches. There were only three games last year where any player had more than 34 touches. Meanwhile, Gibbs’ “backup”, Sione Vaki, is primarily a special teamer. He had two carries yesterday, fewer than Montgomery had in any game in Detroit.
Sometimes fantasy football is about identifying talent. Sometimes, though, it’s just about identifying who’s going to get the ball a lot. Gibbs is both: one of the most talented backs on one of the best offenses in the NFL and the only guy who is going to touch the ball for this offense. Enjoy the feast.
For more fantasy insights, check out Fantasy Genius to find out the real story of your league — who’s the best manager ever, who’s been getting lucky with bogus wins, and which NFL players you’ve lived and died with. Subscriptions start at $3.99 a month and give everybody in your league access — that’s like, 30 cents per player in a 12-team league. Use promo code RODGER to get 20 percent off!
🦓 Weird Call of the Week 🦓
🦁 Lions, 31 🦁
⚜️ Saints, 30 ⚜️
Don’t you love Week 1? The game we love, finally back in action. The spectacular catches … the unbelievable throws … the mind-blowing momentum shifts … the verbose, litigious parsing of approved ruling 15.144, regarding Rule 8, Section 1, Article 1, Item 1, Subsection B of the NFL’s rulebook …
The most controversial call of the week came in Sunday’s Saints-Lions game. Detroit QB Jared Goff threw a ball backward after a hit by Saints edge rusher Chase Young, allowing Saints safety Jonas Sanker to scoop up the ball and jog it into the end zone:
However, despite the pass clearly going backward, officials ruled it an incomplete pass and a dead ball. Complicating matters was an unhelpful explanation by FOX’s Mike Pereira, who said that Goff’s “intent was to throw it forward,” which seems wishy-washy. Did the officials take the touchdown off the board because they looked into Goff’s heart and felt he wanted to make the right play? Would they wipe off an interception because the quarterback intended to throw the ball to his receiver? Would they say a field goal was good because the kicker intended to kick the ball through the uprights?
The ruling was hugely consequential. The two teams went to overtime, with Detroit beating New Orleans 31-30 when the Saints’ game-winning two-point conversion attempt failed. It’s an entirely different game if New Orleans gets this free touchdown they seemed to score.
Believe it or not, the officials made the right call. Pereira just botched the explanation. Here’s the relevant rulebook section:
If contact by an opponent materially affects a passer after the passer begins his throwing motion, it is a forward pass if he passes the ball, regardless of where the ball strikes the ground, a player, an official, or anything else. When a passer is contacted by an opponent before beginning his throwing motion, the direction of the pass is the responsibility of the passer.
Additionally, the NFL’s official casebook includes an approved ruling that more or less describes the play that happened and confirms officials made the right call.
A.R. 15.144 Throwing motion affected
Second-and-6 on A18. QBA1 is under pressure at the A15 and attempts to throw a forward pass to A2 near the sideline at the A24. He starts his throwing motion with his arm but is then contacted by B77 before his hand comes forward. His hand comes forward and he passes the ball, but it lands at the A11 because of the material effect of the contact by B77. A2 falls on the ball at the A11. The Referee rules a backward pass and awards the ball to Team A at the A11.
Ruling: Reviewable, A’s ball third-and-6 on A18. If the quarterback begins his throwing motion with his arm and is then contacted by a defender, causing the pass to go backward, it is still a forward pass. Since the ball hit the ground, this would be reversed to an incomplete pass. The quarterback’s throwing motion starts when he brings the ball back with his arm prior to passing the ball. It is a forward pass when a player is attempting to pass the ball forward and he is in control of the ball and his hand starts forward with the ball. If the ball is knocked loose prior to the hand moving forward with control of the ball, it is a fumble.
Let’s break this down in actual English.
Let’s say a quarterback passes the ball, does not get touched by a defender, and it goes backward. That is a backward pass. Easy enough to understand.
Furthermore, let’s say a quarterback is being tackled by a defender, and then, while being tackled, starts to throw the ball, and because they’re being tackled, it goes backward. That, too, is a backward pass. A player being tackled can’t just toss the ball anywhere to avoid the tackle.
HOWEVER — and this is the scenario we’re dealing with here — if a player starts throwing the ball, and then, while winding up to throw the ball, gets tackled, and because of the tackle, the throw goes backward … the rulebook makes a carveout saying that the pass counts as a forward pass even if it goes backward.
What throws people off is that Goff was tackled during his throwing motion, but before his arm started coming forward. (Actually … his arm really never starts coming forward at all. Because of the way he gets tackled, his arm is aimed at his own goal line, propelling the ball backward the entire time.) And for years, we’ve been taught to look for whether a player’s arm is going forward on pass-fumble plays.
But the “arm going forward” thing comes into play when a player loses his grip on the ball and fumbles while attempting to pass it. If a player were to lose his grip on the ball during the part of the throwing motion that Goff got hit, that would be a fumble. (If that player were to lose control while their arm was going forward, that would be an incomplete forward pass — this is the play we’re used to seeing.)
However, Goff never loses his grip. He holds onto the ball throughout his throwing motion and makes a controlled pass, which goes backward. If we look back at the rulebook text, it says that in these scenarios, “it is a forward pass if he passes the ball.” And on this play, he passes the ball.
Pereira’s wording was clumsy. But hypothetically, if a player is already trying to throw the ball backward — say, a toss to a running back behind the quarterback — and gets tackled, and the throw still goes backward, that doesn’t become a forward pass because of the tackle. I think that’s why Pereira mentioned intent, even if it isn’t in the rulebook.
I want to be clear about this: I think this is dumb. I think it’s dumb that a pass can go backward but be a forward pass. I think it’s dumb that there are plays where we need to see where a player starts his throwing motion, and other plays where a player can start his throwing motion but we’re supposed to look for the forward motion of his hand. I think this is dumb. I think the Saints should have gotten that touchdown.
But this happens every year. Football comes back, and we’re so excited to watch football, and then it turns out football has a big, stupid, 300-page rulebook so arcane and bizarre that we need fully-fledged professional analysts to tell us a pass that went backward is actually a forward pass. What a dumb sport.
🗽 New York, New York 🗽
🏙️ Giants 28 🌃
🤠 Cowboys 24 🤠
✈️ Jets 23 ✈️
🎸 Titans 10 🎸
For the first time since 2009, BOTH New York City-adjacent teams won their Week 1 game. The last time it happened, Mark Sanchez was the Jets’ QB. And it was his debut.
It’s the first time both teams have won in any week since Week 3 of the 2024 season, and the first time both teams have been above .500 since 2022.
For the Giants, the W feels like a turnaround moment for a franchise that might, for once, be headed in the right direction. For the Jets … well, I’ll take the win.
I love digging up combined Jets-Giants misery stats. (Because I’m a Jets fan, and it’s nice to know other people are sad with me.) Since 2017, the Jets and Giants are tied for dead last in the NFL, with identical records of 45-155. Not only are they dead last, but the 30th-best team in the NFL, the Arizona Cardinals, is a full 10 games better than the Jets/Giants.
It might seem random that I picked 2017, but the Jets and Giants rank 31st/32nd whether I pick any season from 2014 to 2019. In that span, the Jets and Giants are also 31st/32nd in points and passing touchdowns.
In that span, the Giants had a ghastly 2-16 record against their most-hated opponents, the Dallas Cowboys. (And one of those wins came in a Week 17 game where the Cowboys were starting Andy Dalton at QB, and the other came in a Week 18 game where the Cowboys played Joe Milton.)
Last night, in their first game under new head coach John Harbaugh, the Giants looked borderline unstoppable. Every receiver was open on every play. Cam Skattebo got tackled sometimes, but mainly because he enjoys being tackled as a hobby.
It’s also possible it was just the Cowboys’ league-worst defense. Sunday night’s game ranked 571st of 574 games since the start of last year in EPA/drive. Long story short: The Giants were more effective on a per-drive basis than the Bears, who scored 59 points.
The Jets’ win felt like less of a portent of future success … but it was pretty damn cathartic. Their 23-10 win over the Titans probably had more to do with the dysfunction of Tennessee than the Jets’ playoff chances in 2026. But Tennessee’s coach is Robert Saleh, the Jets’ last head coach. THAT USED TO BE OUR DYSFUNCTION.
And their offensive coordinator is the Giants’ last head coach, Brian Daboll. All of the worst New Yorkers have gone to Nashville, but what else is new?
Fun fact about New York City professional sports: The city is also home to basketball’s New York Knicks, who won the 2026 NBA Finals after posting the best scoring margin in NBA playoff history. They also became the first team in NBA history to win both the NBA Cup and NBA Finals in the same season.
Sorry. Back to football.
🏜️ Cardinals 26 🏜️
🔌 Chargers 14 🔌
The biggest shock (charging term) of Week 1. The Cardinals weren’t just the biggest underdogs to win a game this week — they were the biggest underdogs in the entire NFL, with the Chargers favored by 10.5 points.
It feels like the Chargers are running out of excuses. This is Year 7 with Justin Herbert, they hired a respected offensive playcaller in Mike McDaniel, and the offensive line is … healthy-ish. And they spent large portions of the game going backwards. They called perhaps the worst timeout I have ever seen in NFL history — facing 3rd-and-30, they called timeout to avoid the a delay-of-game that would have made it 3rd-and-35.
🦅 Eagles 24 🦅
🪖 Commanders 22 🪖
Washington had a two-point conversion for the tie, but the play was DOA, either due to a bad read or a bad call — a shovel pass, right into the stout interior of the Eagles’ defense. Great tackle by DT Moro Ojomo to win the game. It looks like Jayden Daniels should’ve thrown it to the running back in the flat.
Complicating matters: The Commanders couldn’t attempt a two-point conversion on their previous touchdown because big offseason acquisition Stefon Diggs jumped crotch-first into the goalpost in celebration, an automatic 15-yard penalty which pushed the conversion back to the 17-yard line. (They kicked the PAT instead.) I guess you’d rather have a receiver who scores touchdowns and commits crotch penalties than a receiver who doesn’t score touchdowns.
This game also had the single best rep any punt gunner has ever had from Washington safety Tyler Owens, who battled a double team for 40 yards, knocked both guys to the ground, and suplexed the returner:
🇳🇴 Vikings 39 🇳🇴
🧀 Packers 22 🧀
Things looked bleak for Minnesota after Kyler Murray suffered a brutal concussion in the first half, knocking him out of his first game with the team … but backup Carson Wentz threw three touchdowns, including this bomb to Justin Jefferson:
The Vikings trailed 22-10, then scored 29 consecutive points in a total collapse for Green Bay. It was Wentz’s best game in four teams, as he failed to have a three-touchdown, no-interception game during his stints with the Commanders, Rams, and Chiefs. It’s pretty funny that in the offseason, Minnesota claimed that J.J. McCarthy (who is bad at football) was competing with Murray for the starting job, only for him to wind up the third-stringer. Hoping Murray gets better, though.
🥷 Steelers 20 🥷
🅰️ Falcons 13 🅰️
The Falcons have to be one of the first teams in NFL history to start the season with their third-string QB playing due to injury, right? Michael Penix is still recovering from last year’s ACL injury, and Tua Tagovailoa reportedly has an oblique injury, thrusting Cooper Rush into the starting lineup. Rush apparently had back spasms, too, before the game, but toughed it out.
The Steelers won on a late pick-six by T.J. Watt … but I’m not exactly blaming Rush for this one. Incredible play by the world’s biggest little brother, on both the catch and the run. I loved Ben Solak’s breakdown of how he pulled it off:
(BTW, I’m going with a ninja “stealer” for the Steelers emoji. Probably my worst effort out of the 32 teams.)
🐆 Jaguars 34 🐆
💩 Browns 10 💩
Man, Deshaun Watson sucks. He threw a comically bad pick on his third pass of the season and tried to throw a few more before the game ended. (Also, everybody hates him, his contract is the worst in NFL history, and he’s been accused of sexual assault by dozens of women.)
🏴☠️ Raiders 27 🏴☠️
🐬 Dolphins 13 🐬
Looks like a potential huge turnaround for Las Vegas after being the worst team in the NFL last year. Ashton Jeanty had one of his best games in the NFL (102 rushing yards and two receiving touchdowns) in the team’s first game under Klint Kubiak.
Then again, they also won Week 1 last year and finished 3-14, so, whatever, maybe everything is meaningless.
🐯 Bengals 33 🐯
⛵️ Buccaneers 27 ⛵️
Cincinnati has had one of the worst defenses in the NFL since Joe Burrow got here, finishing 30th in points allowed last year … but got four interceptions, including a defensive score in this one. (Although they still allowed a lot of points and Baker Mayfield went 23-for-28 passing … BUT STILL.)
🐴 Broncos 🐴 vs. 🐺 Chiefs 🐺
8:15 p.m. in Kansas City (ABC/ESPN)
Deeply concerning situation for Kansas City: Left tackle Josh Simmons is out, and their offensive line depth is so shaky that they’re starting rookie Kahlil Benson in his first NFL game. Not only is Benson an undrafted rookie … he didn’t play left tackle in college. Like, he did not play a single snap of left tackle in his entire college career. Per The Athletic, he is only the fourth undrafted free agent rookie to start a season at tackle since 2000, and the first since 2020.
Oh, and Patrick Mahomes is returning from a torn ACL and LCL against the best defense in the NFL. Hope that goes well for everybody!
