“R-E-L-A-X.” It’s not the most memorable thing Aaron Rodgers has said over the past six years, but it always flickers in my mind during my early September darkness retreats leading into every season. Rodgers made the comment on a radio show after the Packers started 1-2 in 2014, but I think it applies even better to Week 1. Stupid stuff happens in each NFL opening slate, like the Raiders’ 2025 upset of the Patriots in Foxborough that everyone’s brought up 100 times now. Layer in that we have 19 new offensive play callers, 14 new defensive play callers, and 10 new head coaches in a league that is apparently trying to snip-snap back to fullbacks and the under-center ground game like it’s 2006, and we get surprises like Kenneth Walker III’s record-setting day against the Broncos and the Giants running wild against a tissue-paper-soft Cowboys defense.
The reaction to Week 1 is a time for excitement, despair, and a collective sense of bewilderment. That’s where I come in. I want to create a resource to speak to the hopes and copes of fan bases that are either on cloud nine or logged into VPNs with burner accounts to trash their coaching staff on Reddit. So I’m introducing the NFL Take-o-Meter to make sense of all these polarizing dreams (or nightmares) forming in everyone’s heads.
The scale goes from 1 to 11, because of course it goes to 11, with 1 being “I’m not buying it” and 11 being “I’m all the way in.” Let’s get to the show.
Caleb’s right: The Bears played their worst game of the season in Week 1.
Obviously, I’m skeptical of this take. Cellphones didn’t exist the last time the Bears scored eight touchdowns in a game, before their 59-point outburst against the Panthers in Week 1. This was the most points in Chicago franchise history in a game that didn’t feature a return touchdown. Running backs D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai and quarterback Caleb Williams combined for 189 yards and six touchdowns on the ground; no NFL team has tallied six rushing TDs in an opener since before the Great Depression. So, yeah, the Bears will play worse games this season. But I’m picking up what Caleb is putting down.
Plenty of people expected the Bears offense to take a leap forward in 2026 with Williams in his second season of the Ben Johnson experience. Year one was a roller coaster, with low lows to start and then magical, sometimes unfathomable highs down the stretch. Chicago led the league in 2025 with seven fourth-quarter comebacks. But Johnson expects more now. He wants the scoring record. And Williams is sexy-mustache-mogging at Cubs games and finally practicing gut health. The bar has been raised, and even with a 59-piece meal on offense, Williams and Johnson know they left food on the table.
Second-year receiver Luther Burden III, who was first-team All-Hype this offseason, fumbled away a new set of downs on the Bears’ opening drive. Williams was stuffed on two different QB sneaks in short-yardage situations, including a fourth-and-1 that ended a four-and-out drive in the second quarter. Williams also missed second-year tight end Colston Loveland running wide open over the middle on his first (!) target of the game in the third quarter, and a Derrick Brown neutral-zone infraction negated a Williams interception on the Panthers' 1-yard line and led to a Chicago touchdown. Carolina handed the Bears another touchdown with a roughing the passer call on a second-and-20 in the red zone.
These are small things, sure, but Johnson and Williams intend to win every high-leverage opportunity this fall. Williams’s sneaks need to get better. Loveland needs more targets, and the Bears need a blueprint that doesn’t involve them getting gifted touchdowns on boneheaded penalties. Still, Johnson and Williams are pursuing perfection. Even if Caleb’s “worst game” quote is wrong, his message about the Bears’ new standard is right.
Matt LaFleur’s seat is already scorching.
Who is more important to the Packers offense: Matt LaFleur or Jordan Love? Last year, I would’ve argued for LaFleur until I was blue in the face. What he accomplished with Malik Willis filling in for the injured Love early in the 2024 season was inspired. In his tenure as Green Bay’s offensive play caller (2019 to now), only the Ravens have averaged more EPA per drive.
But none of that scoring matters if the Packers keep choking away big leads in the most soul-crushing ways possible. LaFleur just can’t help himself at this point. Green Bay’s 2023 season ended in the divisional round, with the team blowing a 21-14 fourth-quarter lead against the 49ers. Eight months ago, the Packers coughed up 25 fourth-quarter points to blow a playoff game against the Bears that they once led 21-3. And now, after blowing a 22-10 second-half lead to Carson Wentz and the Vikings in Week 1, the Packers Reddit pitchforks are already out for LaFleur.
Green Bay raced in front last Sunday behind some Love heroics, but Minnesota defensive coordinator Brian Flores ultimately put the Packers in hell with his constant games up front and his heavy post-snap movement. Flores sent extra rushers on almost 80 (!) percent of the Green Bay dropbacks and generated pressure on more than half of them. But the Packers’ big dogs up front weren’t outmanned as much as they were outsmarted. The line seemed out of sync with itself and the offense for the entire game, which is more of an indictment of LaFleur than it is a credit to Flores for never letting off the gas.
On top of the Packers’ overall sloppiness and bad discipline—they had a plus-9 penalty differential and a plus-83 penalty yards differential, both the worst of any team in Week 1—the late-game showing was the opposite of what Green Bay fans want to see from a coach they already have doubts about. We didn’t even get any major timeout errors or bad fourth-down decisions, and this was still a disastrous collapse by LaFleur.
The Packers should be able to regain some confidence against a soft schedule (at Jets, vs. Falcons) over the next two weeks, but a lot needs to improve for LaFleur before the schedule toughens up with matchups against the Bucs, Bears, Cowboys, and Lions in Weeks 4-7.
[Extremely John Harbaugh voice] The New York GIANTS are legit contenders.
I’ll admit it! I was overconfident that the Giants would stumble out of the gate. I (like an idiot) was high on the Cowboys offense and expected Dallas to experience some positive defensive regression after letting Matt Eberflus loose and replacing him at DC with football nerd icon Christian Parker. But Harbaugh’s new disgusting brothers in the booth—offensive coordinator Matt Nagy and assistant Greg Roman—took out a paddle and spanked the silver off the Cowboys’ pants for all to see. Everything about the Cowboys defense was either soft or broken, and Dallas posted the franchise’s worst defensive performance by EPA per drive in almost a decade, way worse than anything the Flus put to tape last year. Quarterback Jaxson Dart was playing on easy mode (outside of that one Caleb Downs blitz), and no one in a Cowboys uniform wanted to tackle anybody, let alone the fucking Juggernaut the Giants have in the backfield in Cam Skattebo.
I’m a believer in the tone the Giants want to set and Skattebo’s ability to set it, but I am not buying fully in just yet. The only defense worse than Big Blue’s in Week 1 (again, by EPA per drive) was Parker’s disasterclass. Let’s see Harbaugh and his guys throw the same haymakers against the Rams with Sean McVay and Co. in a must-win spot coming off their Melbourne embarrassment.
Declan Doyle is the top 2027 head coaching candidate.
Two things are en vogue with NFL scheme lords right now: (1) getting out of shotgun and going under center and (2) using heavier (more tight ends, fullbacks, running backs) personnel groups. Teams ran single-receiver personnel groups (14 percent) and multiple–tight end groups (34 percent) at the highest clip for any Week 1 since at least 2006, per TruMedia. Leaguewide offensive under-center percentage (43 percent) was also the highest it’s been in Week 1 since 2017. Oh, and this was tied for the highest-scoring Week 1 since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970.
Enter new Ravens offensive coordinator Declan Doyle. The 30-year-old former Ben Johnson assistant has embraced this reality and is using it to maximize Baltimore’s talent. I hope Ravens fans enjoy it for the rest of the season—because I think it may be the only season of Doyle they’re going to get.
The 2025 Ravens lined up under center just 36 percent of the time; in Week 1 of this year, Lamar Jackson was under center on 58 percent of his snaps. Doyle also used a lot more blocking tight ends, like Durham Smythe and Matthew Hibner, and ran a higher percentage of single-receiver sets. Part of that was finding a solution to Zay Flowers (hamstring) and Ja’Kobi Lane (wrist) leaving the game with injuries, but part of it was a focus in the game plan, and it worked like a dream.
Jackson thrived throwing on the run off play-action boots. His $140 million receiver, Flowers, lived up to his lofty price tag before he got hurt. Mark Andrews looked more viable than he did all of last year. And of course we have to talk about Derrick Henry.
Tackling Henry at a standstill is really the only way to stop him. Running out of shotgun was never Henry’s primary strength, because it gives defenses an edge in slowing him before he fully gets going. Against the Colts, Henry basically always had momentum—and defenders responded by sacrificing their bodies in the hope that he would fall down along with them.
Henry rushed for 144 yards and three touchdowns on 24 carries, but it felt like he had three times that total. He looked like a runaway diesel truck practically every time he touched the ball. That’s partly because the Colts have one of the weakest front sevens in the league, but Doyle also deserves a tip of the crown for giving the King the ball exactly as the good Lord intended.
The new Chargers are just as embarrassing as the old Chargers.
Justin Herbert got his best receiver hurt by throwing him into a high-speed collision. Running back Omarion Hampton lost a fumble that was forced by his own teammate’s back. New offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel, the play caller expected to save Herbert from last season’s sad-boy energy, turned in one of the most invisible performances of his coaching career. Jim Harbaugh had only his typical weird answers for why the Chargers rotated different players at guard, and McDaniel didn’t call plays in high-leverage spots like they were rotating replacement-level players at guard. Oh, and losing former DC Jesse Minter to Baltimore looks like a bigger deal than anyone realized: The Chargers finished Week 1 ranked 22nd in defensive EPA per drive against Jacoby Brissett and the Cardinals.
In other words: The Chargers are down horrendous, and somehow no one saw this bad start coming. Plus, their schedule is one of the toughest in the league after they host the Raiders as big favorites in Week 2:
- Week 3: at Bills
- Week 4: at Seahawks
- Week 5: vs. Broncos
- Week 6: at Chiefs
- Week 7: Bye
- Week 8: at Rams
- Week 9: vs. Texans
- Week 10: at Ravens
The McDaniel-Herbert experiment crashed and burned out of the blocks. I think it’ll get better, but I’m approaching this situation with caution.
The Bengals defense is all the way back.
Cincinnati’s defense flat-out sucked last year. It’s flat-out sucked every year since the team’s surprise run to Super Bowl LVI. The Bengals rank 28th in defensive EPA per drive since 2022. Just because the Bucs gave a game away with four fumbles doesn’t mean that Cincy’s defense is all of a sudden back.
Even with the four takeaways, the Bengals ranked 18th among NFL defenses in points allowed per drive in Week 1. They were 24th in success rate and 25th in pressure rate. Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield isn’t going to hand out freebies in every game the Bengals play, so let’s just take a sip of settle-down juice, at least until we’ve seen this defense deliver a more dominant performance with fewer noisy turnovers.
Don’t get me wrong. The defense is better, of course. How could it not be, after the Bengals paid up for nose tackle Dexter Lawrence, edge Boye Mafe, and safety Bryan Cook? Do it again versus C.J. Stroud and the Texans in Houston, and I’ll adjust the Take-o-Meter accordingly.
Kenneth Walker III has resurrected vintage Andy Reid.
Because all six of Andy Reid’s best seasons (by EPA per drive) came with Patrick Mahomes in Kansas City, it’s easy to forget that Reid was the architect of a completely different type of offense in Philadelphia in the early 2000s. Reid’s Eagles teams featured Brian Westbrook, LeSean McCoy, and Brent Celek, with Donovan McNabb lined up under center more than 60 percent of the time in that era, and their ground attack from 2006 to 2010 led the league in the percentage of runs that went for 10-plus yards. Reid got away from that approach as the NFL entered a passing boom and Mahomes morphed into a quarterbacking god. But with the two-high takeover happening on defense and the massive weight drop-off happening among players on the front seven, the time has come to install heavy sets and embrace an under-center run game to zag the zig.
Reid went deep into his bag to zag the zig in Week 1, as free-agent addition Walker rushed 23 times for 173 yards and a touchdown against the vaunted Broncos defense on Monday Night Football. Kansas City averaged 0.31 EPA per rush from under center against Denver. That’s 78 percent higher than any other offense in Week 1.
The Chiefs’ opponents aren’t going to be shocked when Kansas City attempts to stuff K-Walk down their throats Bone Tomahawk–style (IYKYK) in the future. Reid needs to iron out the kinks in the passing game with Travis Kelce looking older by the catch, Rashee Rice returning to form, and Mahomes wearing a giant knee brace nine months removed from ACL/PCL surgery. But Mahomes said in July that if all else failed, the Chiefs would “hand it off to K9 and let him go to work.” I guess he was telling the truth. This new wrinkle could resurrect the high-scoring Chiefs experience in a brand-new (but also incredibly familiar) way.
Klint Kubiak has solved the Raiders’ run-game problems.
Chip Kelly was the highest-paid offensive coordinator in league history, and he was fired midway through the 2025 season after calling plays in games that he didn’t install in practice. Brennan Carroll, Pete Carroll’s son cosplaying as an NFL offensive line coach, was so bad that the Raiders’ offensive linemen privately scheduled meetings without him because they thought it’d give them a better chance to succeed. What I’m saying is that the bar for new Raiders head coach Klint Kubiak was below multiple rings of hell, so of course his offense cleared the Kelly-Carroll calamity bar in Week 1. But can his group hold up against better defenses than the Dolphins? Is the ceiling high enough to carry the Raiders to those vaunted “In the Hunt” graphics in December?
Star tight end Brock Bowers (meniscus trim) didn’t even play in Week 1, and it still felt like Kubiak had several easy buttons to press. Second-year running back Ashton Jeanty found massive rushing lanes incomparable to what he was seeing last season. He got at least 2 yards beyond the line of scrimmage without being contacted on just 31 percent of his carries in 2025; against the Dolphins, he had 2-plus yards of daylight on 43 percent (10 of 23) of his rushing attempts. New center Tyler Linderbaum—whom the Raiders paid 50 percent above market rate to acquire in free agency—was a big reason why. He got to the second level with ease and anchored the zone running game from the middle. It also helped that the Raiders' three returning offensive linemen were working with a coach (Rick Dennison) who has more than three decades of experience, rather than secretly meeting beneath the bleachers to keep Brennan from finding them out.
The Chargers defense will present a much tougher test for Kubiak, Linderbaum, Jeanty, and everyone else in Week 2. As a proud Raiders fan, I want to crank this score into the 8s already after what I saw and felt in the game against the Dolphins in Week 1. But I’ve been hurt too much. I can’t let myself overreact until we see more of it against competition with a much better front seven.
Tennessee is already at Defcon 1 with Saleh-Daboll.
The Titans were the least impressive team of the preseason for me, and it wasn’t especially close. They played their starters a lot, and at no point did they ever look good or even in rhythm against other teams’ 2s and 3s. So I guess I’m not that surprised that they still looked like dog vomit at home against the Jets in Week 1. The arguments against new head coach and defensive play caller Robert Saleh and offensive coordinator Brian Daboll are easy. They’re two failed head coaches, and their new team looks like a complete failure on offense, defense, and special teams. Their roster is talent bereft beyond Jeffery Simmons and Cam Ward. First-round rookie wide receiver Carnell Tate has been practically invisible since he was drafted fourth overall. And the offensive line is one of the worst units in football.
In short: The outlook is as bleak as you’d expect after combining the castoffs of the cellar-dwellar Giants and Jets. The Titans are extremely unlikely to compete this fall, so their priority needs to be fixing Ward’s bad habits and evaluating who to build their offense around in 2027. My gut one week (and three preseason weeks) in: Saleh fires Daboll by year’s end and ownership hard-commits to Ward with the hopes of landing Jeremiah Smith at the top of the 2027 draft. Still, that could flip to #AimForArch if Tennessee can’t find a win until it faces the Colts and Browns in Weeks 6 and 7. The Titans’ next four games are against the Eagles, Giants, Ravens, and Texans.
Sean Payton will call plays again before Week 7.
Honestly, this feels conservative. A 9.8 rating is my version of extreme restraint. ESPN isn’t running dueling Sean Payton–Davis Webb shots on the first drive of Week 1’s game if Webb isn’t already in the fire. Payton doesn’t need the mini-bye the Broncos get coming out Thursday Night Football in Week 6 to take back the keys to the offense, but part of me thinks Payton wants to Webb get fucked by the Broncos’ brutal schedule over the next five weeks:
- Week 2: vs. Jaguars
- Week 3: vs. Rams
- Week 4: at 49ers
- Week 5: at Chargers
- Week 6: vs. Seahawks
Webb might not make it to San Francisco, or maybe Payton will stow him under the bus until he’s finished having his fun. Either way, I’ll be seated.
