Week of the NFL Season is about in the books, and week one taught us a lot about what we can expect to see for the rest of the season. Of course, some things we expected would happen, and they did, while there were a few surprises nobody expected.
NFL Week 1 – The Good
First, NFL Football is back, which everyone can appreciate. If there is nothing else from this weekend to take away, the fact that football is back is something to be celebrated. Besides being back, here are a few of the good highlights:
- Thursday Night Football was a classic. Whether you agree with the controversial calls or not, having a game come down to a toe-tap as the clock expires is the perfect way to start off a season.
- Greg Rousseau (Bills) and Alontae Taylor (Saints) both had three sacks in their opening game. It’s rare to get two sacks in a game, but three by two players is phenomenal.
- Saints offense: It wasn’t so much that the Saints had a great stat line; they were just very efficient. Combined, they only had 380 total yards, they just scored five touchdowns with those yards.
- Ryan Rhekow broke the NFL rookie punting debut record with an average of 64.5 yards per punt.
NFL Week 1 – The Bad
- NFL Kickoffs: The idea of the new kickoff was to have more teams elect to return kickoffs. While the number of kickoff returns went up, only 34% were returned (up from 21% last year). It appears that teams are still willing to take the touchback even it means moving the ball up to the 30-yard line.
- NFL Rookie QB’s: Yes, Caleb Williams won with the Bears, but he only trew for 93 yards with his longest pass being 13 yards. Bo Nix was the only other quarterback who played and he also struggled with 138 yards passing and two interceptions.
- NFL Secondaries: There were only 22 interceptions on the opening weekend (before MNF). That is a very low number coming out to about .66 per team.
NFL Week 1 – The Ugly
- Passing Yards: There were only two quarterbacks who threw for more than 300 yards in week one, and one of them (Stafford) only eclipsed that number because he got overtime. With touchbacks moving up five yards, more running clocks, and emphasis on long drives, are the days of 4,500 yard quarterbacks ending?
- Puka Nacua’s knee injury early against the Lions did not look good. The star wide receiver may end up missing more than only a few games after it appeared his knee popped out of place.
- Cincinnati Bengals: For months, the narrative has been, “Once we get Burrow back, watch out!” Well, the Bengals kicked off their season with a 16-10 loss to the Patriots.
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