Sunday afternoon of Week 1 is the best sort of chaos. After months of projecting, speculating and believing, the opening afternoon of the NFL season is a seven-hour reality show. That quarterback you spent six months talking yourself into has to deal with blitzes at NFL speed. The Day 3 pick who wowed everyone in camp has to go up against the first-round stars. The coach who talked a big game about his team’s philosophy has to actually stick with it when the game’s on the line.
And some of what you see in Week 1 actually turns out to be meaningful. Just not everything.
Go back to Week 1 last season, for instance. The league’s top scorer was the Saints, who dropped 47 on the Panthers. The Patriots upset the Bengals with a great performance from their defense. The Commanders got blown out by the Buccaneers. And fresh off their run to the Super Bowl, the 49ers signaled that they were ready to go on another charge by beating up the Jets on Monday night.
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Obviously, some of what happens in Week 1 is something closer to a mirage — some combination of talent, luck and small-sample variance. Let’s try to sort through what was real and what wasn’t from the first full slate of the season. And naturally, while this isn’t normally the case, I have to start with what I saw Sunday night.
Jump to a section:
Ravens on fourth down | Lions’ offense
Bengals’ defense | Jets’ run game
Rodgers in Pittsburgh | Kicks/kickoffs
Commanders’ run game | Colts’ offense
Dolphins’ offense | Nix’s second year
Real: The Ravens made a brutal mistake on fourth down Sunday night
I normally don’t cover the Sunday night game in my Monday morning column, since I’m usually writing and recording my weekly hit with “The Domonique Foxworth Show” during the game. (I catch up and watch the game Monday afternoon.) But with the Bills and Ravens playing out a classic, I had to stop what I was doing and watch the fourth quarter of what might very well end up being the best game of the season.
There are a million things to say about the game, but I’m going to focus on one that ended up playing a critical role in deciding who won. After the Bills failed on a 2-point try that would have tied the game at 40 with two minutes to go, the Ravens took back the ball with a chance to seal up a huge victory. After two runs produced one yard, a crosser to DeAndre Hopkins forced the Bills to use their last timeout with 1:33 remaining. The Ravens faced a fourth down with exactly 2.6 yards to go, per NFL Next Gen Stats.
You know what happened, but let’s consider what coach John Harbaugh was facing in this moment. On one hand, a first down wins the game. While the Ravens had not picked up significant yardage on the first two runs of this series, they had Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry in their backfield, two players who had combined to run for 239 yards on 24 carries. Jackson said after the game that he was dealing with cramps, but the Ravens had three timeouts and could have used one of them to give Jackson some time before that fateful final snap. They also could have given the ball directly to Henry, who has plenty of experience in the Wildcat, if Jackson was unavailable.
On the other hand, the alternative was punting to Josh Allen, who would have just over 90 seconds and no timeouts. The Bills would need a field goal, but that kick would win them the game — not just push it to overtime. They were dealing with a kicker new to the organization in Matt Prater, but the 41-year-old is known for his booming leg, having gone 9-of-12 from 50-plus yards as recently as 2023 with the Cardinals. And with the game on the line, the Ravens were going to need to either force a turnover, have a missed field goal or stop Allen with all four downs in play.
The Ravens are one of the most analytics-friendly organizations in the league, and that extends down to Harbaugh, who is certainly open to data and unconventional thinking in his decision-making. They have been comfortably making aggressive calls in the past, even when they’re unpopular. They haven’t shied away from those decisions, even when the results have turned out poorly.
I can’t speak to what Baltimore’s model said in that moment, but ESPN’s model had this as a major mistake:
Hate to do this to my team, but we had a strong go rec out to 4, and marginal out to 6 yds to go with 1:33 to play. pic.twitter.com/taraHIcjIi
— Brian Burke (@bburkeESPN) September 8, 2025
And again, consider the context. What’s the strength of the Ravens? Where are their best players? What about the Bills? What do they do best? How confident is Baltimore that its defense, which had already been chasing Allen all over the field for 68 snaps, was going to have the gas it needed to come up with four consecutive stops? I don’t want to be outcome-driven and base criticism on what happened, but it’s difficult to imagine that the Ravens weren’t in better shape keeping their offense on the field and trusting one of their two future Hall of Famers to get 2.6 yards and end the game.
Every team makes mistakes. (The Bills threw a fade to Keon Coleman on their 2-point try to tie the game at 40.) Perhaps Harbaugh would have felt differently if Jackson hadn’t been cramping up. Maybe the Ravens go for it on fourth-and-1 instead of fourth-and-2.6. Instead of leaning into what they do best, though, Harbaugh let Buffalo’s best player decide the game. And he did.
Real: There are concerns about the Lions’ offense
As Detroit has grown into the cream of the NFC North crop over the past few years, Lions fans have dismissed the idea of being challenged by the Packers for the division title. Beginning with their fateful performance in knocking the Packers out of a playoff spot in Aaron Rodgers’ final game with the organization at the end of the 2022 season, the Lions had won four of their past five against Green Bay, including a clean sweep in 2024.
The mood changed Sunday. Buoyed by the debut of new star edge rusher Micah Parsons in front of a raucous home crowd, the Packers got out to a 10-0 lead in the first quarter against their rivals and didn’t really look back. It took a spectacular catch from rookie wideout Isaac TeSlaa in the final minute to earn the Lions their only touchdown of the day in a 27-13 thumping.
Parsons was the story. While he played only 29 of 65 snaps in his first game with the Packers, the newly acquired defender managed one sack and three pressures. He helped create a Jared Goff interception in the red zone at the end of the second quarter by beating Penei Sewell to the inside, the second time Parsons beat his fellow perennial All-Pro to the interior. The pressure prevented Goff from seeing safety Evan Williams breaking on his throw to Amon-Ra St. Brown, costing the Lions points before halftime.
Goff had a disappointing game, especially putting aside what he did in garbage time. Through three quarters, he was 21-of-25 — but those throws created only 152 yards and eight first downs. Goff turned a league-high 43.8% of his throws into first downs last season; the 32% rate he hit on against the Packers would have ranked 28th in the league a year ago.
During his turnaround over the past few years in Detroit, Goff thrived by avoiding pure dropback situations, with the Lions often playing from ahead and Ben Johnson turning the play-action dial harder than any other coordinator in football. Goff was excellent as usual with play-action against the Packers, going 9-of-10 for 86 yards. Without the play fakes, though, he went 22-of-29 for just 139 yards — and that even includes the fourth quarter.
And to work things all the way backwards, the Lions couldn’t get their play-action game going because they weren’t a threat to run the football. The game script didn’t help matters, but David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs combined for just 44 yards on 20 carries. They had nearly as many stuffs for no gain or a loss (six) as they did successful rush attempts (seven), per NFL Next Gen Stats. This came against a team that lost its two best run defenders on the interior during the offseason in T.J. Slaton Jr. (who led the NFL in run stop win rate) and Kenny Clark (who was sent to the Cowboys as part of the Parsons trade).
While Goff has been excellent in his role, that run game has been at the heart of what the Lions have accomplished on offense. And there are reasons to be nervous about what we saw. Detroit is rebuilding on the interior of its line after Frank Ragnow retired and Kevin Zeitler left in free agency. The Lions have moved Graham Glasgow to center and are starting Christian Mahogany and rookie Tate Ratledge — who had a combined two career starts before Sunday — at guard. While the Lions have a great offensive line coach in Hank Fraley and have been excellent talent developers, it’s just unfair to lose one of the league’s best centers and a very good veteran guard and expect everything to just keep rolling.
On Sunday, that Lions ground game came to a halt. Mahogany was overpowered by Colby Wooden and beat to the inside by Nazir Stackhouse to create a pair of tackles for loss. Glasgow had trouble with his double-teams, including a whiff of a forearm shiver to leave Gibbs with a lineman in his face in the backfield. The execution from what often looked like such a well-oiled unit in 2023 and 2024 was lacking. The idea of establishing the run to create a basis for play-action is faulty, but the Packers weren’t afraid of Detroit’s run game yesterday. They didn’t have any reason to be.
That pushes Goff into the dropback passing game, which creates problems. Over the past four years, Goff is first in the NFL in QBR when unpressured — but 28th by the same metric when pressured. The Packers overloaded Ratledge with a double A-gap pressure for one sack, while Lukas Van Ness put Mahogany on skates for another. Taylor Decker struggled with Rashan Gary. And when Sewell is struggling with Parsons, well, there’s nothing for the Lions to fall back on. They’ll face easier defenses than the Packers, but the NFC North is officially a real fight. And the Lions have a weakness other teams are going to be picking at in the weeks to come.
0:24
Jared Goff throws an INT in the red zone
Evan Williams jumps in front of Jared Goff’s pass to pick him off in the red zone.
Fake: There should be excitement about the Bengals’ defense
It couldn’t be much worse than it was last season, and it was certainly better on Sunday. On a day where the Browns continued to flummox Joe Burrow and limited the Bengals’ offense to 17 points on nine meaningful drives, the eyes of Cincinnati fans turned to new defensive coordinator Al Golden. The much-maligned defense succeeded, holding the Browns to 16 points while coming up with six consecutive stops to end the game.
A win’s a win, and for a Bengals team whose mandate throughout the offseason was to avoid getting off to yet another slow start, I don’t think they’ll care too much about how the game played out. If we’re evaluating what the Bengals did on defense and how it will carry over against tougher competition, though, I’m not quite as optimistic as the victory would suggest.
To start, Cincinnati only won this game because of two critical misses by debuting Browns kicker Andre Szmyt, who had gone 19-of-21 in the UFL a year ago. Szmyt missed an extra point that would have given the Browns a three-point lead in the third quarter. And after the Browns drove into range for a field goal to take the lead back with 2:25 to go in the ballgame, Szmyt missed a 36-yarder, swinging Cleveland’s win probability by more than 28 percentage points.
In calm conditions and without a significant rush on the kick, NFL Next Gen Stats estimates that Szmyt should make that game-winning field goal 90% of the time. We don’t know how the game plays out if Szmyt makes those kicks, of course, but the misses were two gifts from the Browns to their division rivals, and ones the Bengals can’t count on every week.
They weren’t the only kind offerings the Browns provided on Sunday. The Bengals made two huge plays with a pair of interceptions. Jordan Battle’s pick in the third quarter set the Bengals up with a short field for what would be the game-winning field goal, while DJ Turner’s interception with 1:30 to go poured cold water on what would be Cleveland’s last realistic shot of driving into field goal range for a shot to win the game.
I’d love to say that those interceptions were the product of brilliant positioning or excellent reads, but they were two bizarre Browns drops. Jerry Jeudy was wide open for a deep curl from Joe Flacco, but a low throw bounced off Jeudy’s hands and into the arms of Battle. And when Flacco threw another curl to Cedric Tillman with anticipation, another low pass deflected off Tillman’s fingertips and into the hands of Turner, who made the sort of slick diving catch his opponents seemingly could not. Again, those plays mattered on Sunday, but it’s tough to count on your opponents deflecting two passes into your hands every weekend.
And beyond the interceptions and missed field goals, the Bengals didn’t do a great job of handling what projects to be one of the worst offenses in the NFL. The Browns went 11-of-19 on third and fourth down and scored two touchdowns in their three trips inside the red zone. They held the ball for 37 minutes, controlling the clock while keeping the Cincinnati offense off the field. The Bengals also handed the Browns four first downs via penalties. And while they pressured Flacco 17 times on 47 dropbacks, the Trey Hendrickson-led pass rush sacked one of the league’s most immobile quarterbacks only twice.
The Bengals will have better days on offense, and when they do, they won’t need to hold their opponents to 16 points and rely on missed kicks and tipped interceptions to sustain their leads. If the goal is to be better on defense than they were in 2024, Week 1 was a step in the right direction. I’m just not sure it was much more than a baby step.
Real: The Jets can run the ball
If there was ever going to be hope for the Jets on offense this season, it was going to come through their run game. Justin Fields has been a below-average passer during his time in the NFL, but he has made up significant value by running for 2,509 yards and 19 touchdowns over his four years with the Bears and Steelers. New offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand came over from a Lions team that fielded what might be the polar opposite of quarterbacks in Goff, but Detroit ran the ball effectively and built a creative offense around that rushing attack. With an offensive line stuffed with first-round picks and a mobile QB added to the equation, the Jets were going to need to run to survive on offense.
Even without one of those first-rounders in guard Alijah Vera-Tucker — who suffered a season-ending triceps injury days before the season began — the Jets thrived on Sunday. Facing a Steelers defense which ranked 13th in the league in rush defense DVOA a year ago, Fields and a trio of halfbacks combined to run the ball 39 times for 189 yards and three touchdowns. Combining his work as a passer and runner, Fields’ 79.9 Total QBR was his fourth-best start as a pro and his best in any single game since the 2022 campaign.
The first offensive snap of the game encapsulated why Jets fans should be excited. It’s one thing to copy a run concept and another to build in some subterfuge and manipulate the best player on the opposing defense. The Jets were going to start with a zone run to the left side, away from T.J. Watt, who is one of the league’s best edge defenders at chasing down those runs from behind and making plays. Just before the snap, Engstrand brought tight end Mason Taylor in motion from out wide into the backfield, which isn’t anything shocking. At the snap, though, Taylor reversed course and ran back into the flat where he had come from. Fields was always handing the ball off, but to Watt, this looked like a play-action bootleg to his side. As a result, Watt stayed home, giving Breece Hall an extra moment to find his cutback lane on what ended up being an 18-yard run.
0:30
Braelon Allen powers in for Jets TD
Braelon Allen barrels into the end zone to put the Jets back in front vs. the Steelers.
The Jets got real contributions from their lesser-known players. Josh Myers, inserted into the starting lineup at center after Vera-Tucker’s injury, pancaked a Steelers lineman on that first run and had a very solid game as a run blocker. Josh Reynolds, playing ahead of Allen Lazard at wide receiver, was effective blocking on the edge and even pitching in on Braelon Allen’s touchdown. John Simpson, arguably the team’s best lineman in 2024, was excellent at the point of attack throughout the day.
It wasn’t all sleek design, either. Isaiah Davis hit a 15-yard run on a counter concept where Patrick Queen tried to peek around a defender, leaving Davis room to abandon where the run was supposed to go and simply sprint upfield. Fields actually appeared to make a couple of incorrect reads on run concepts, but the Jets were athletic enough to overcome their mistakes. An excellent double-team from Myers and Simpson produced a 17-yard gain on a zone run where Watt steamed down the line. Fields would probably look back and say he should have kept the football there, too; he just simply outran the superstar edge rusher to the sideline for a 15-yard run early in the game on another zone-read look.
One mistake did come back to haunt the Jets. On a third-and-3 as they tried to close out the game with four minutes left, it looked as if Hall would have had a pretty solid shot of earning a first down on a split zone run concept. Instead, Fields kept the ball and immediately had to deal with Alex Highsmith, who was bearing straight for the QB off the edge. The play lost 2 yards, and after they punted the ball away, the Jets lost their lead.
While things ended in a disappointing way, there was a lot to like about what we saw from the Jets on offense. The best version of Fields has always been some combination of the quarterback run game and a vertical passing attack built off the threat of those runs, and we saw both Sunday. He hit Garrett Wilson for a 33-yard touchdown pass on a deep crosser designed to stress the single-high coverage the Steelers employed to try to get an extra safety in the box. On the day, Fields went 13-of-17 for 182 yards and that touchdown against single-high shells. If the Jets play like this every week, they’re going to be a genuine problem on offense.
Let’s set expectations appropriately. The big story coming out of Sunday’s 34-32 win in his return to MetLife Stadium, of course, is that Rodgers torched his old team for four touchdown passes. That’s true, but I’m not sure that’s really the best measure of how he played. One of those touchdowns was a tap pass on a jet sweep to Jonnu Smith, a play Arthur Smith has been longingly drawing up in his diary over and over again after a year spent apart from his favorite tight end in 2024. Another came on a short field after the Jets fumbled away a kickoff to the Steelers.
By Total QBR, Rodgers’ 63.2 mark was 12th in Week 1, which seems a little more realistic. His receivers, led by DK Metcalf, averaged 7.8 yards after the catch per completion, second-most for any quarterback in the league behind Lamar Jackson. Rodgers took four sacks, and while he didn’t throw an interception, a wild pass under pressure might have produced a pick-six if Brandon Stephens hadn’t fallen down as he tried to catch the football.
What we did get was a quarterback who seemed entirely functional within Smith’s offense. Rodgers wasn’t always fond of play-action and wanted to keep his eyes downfield at all times in Green Bay and New York. But on Sunday, he went 8-of-10 off play-action for 71 yards and three touchdowns, with Smith keeping him in the shotgun for most of his dropbacks and aligning the run game accordingly. Thirteen of the 19 designed runs for Pittsburgh’s running backs came out of the shotgun, a shift for a team that ran two-thirds of its carries from under center last season.
That run game wasn’t good, which might be a little concerning. I’m not sure how sustainable the offense will be in terms of generating that sort of yards after catch, too, and Rodgers didn’t even attempt a single throw 20 or more yards downfield (though he had a few come very close). Still, Rodgers was accurate and he didn’t turn the football over, and that’s usually enough for the Steelers to pull out victories.
Real: Sunday afternoon’s best play was a kick
Leaving aside a wild Ravens-Bills game on Sunday night and a spectacular performance from Derrick Henry, the best single play of Sunday afternoon was a kick. Chris Boswell’s game-winning 60-yard field goal against the Jets was an absolute missile, essentially a perfect kick that made it through the center of the uprights with plenty of room to spare. It had a real shot at being good from 70 yards, and doing that in the Meadowlands isn’t exactly easy.
The Steelers, as is their wont, swung a game with big special teams plays. In addition to Boswell’s 60-yard field goal, they forced the game’s only turnover when Kenneth Gainwell stripped Xavier Gipson on a kickoff return, with Pittsburgh recovering and converting the short field into a touchdown. With the changes to the league’s K-balls and another rule shift I’m about to touch on, this is feeling like a season in which special teams could mean more than usual. That’s a positive for the Steelers, who perennially outperform their opponents in the third facet of the game.
0:26
Chris Boswell drills 60-yard go-ahead FG for Steelers
Chris Boswell boots a late 60-yard field goal to put the Steelers in front of the Jets.
Real: The updated dynamic kickoff is going to create more returns
Disincentivizing teams from booting the ball through the end zone by setting touchbacks at the 35-yard line (moved up from the 30) is going to fuel more returns in 2025. Just 18.6% of kickoffs produced a touchback in Week 1, down from 64.5% in Week 1 last season and 77.6% in Week 1 of the 2023 campaign. This isn’t going away.
Those plays are going to create real differences and tangible opportunities for teams that do a good job in separating themselves from the competition as the year goes along. The Titans picked up three points when Chimere Dike returned a kickoff 71 yards with 16 seconds to go in the first half against the Broncos. The Rams nearly set themselves up with a 74-yard return from Jordan Whittington in the first quarter of their win over the Texans, only for the run to be called back for holding.
There might be some teams that decide to just take a touchback against the league’s best return units, but that will be a real advantage for offenses once they take the field. Over the past five years, drives starting within 1 yard of the 30-yard line have generated an average of 2.0 points. Move that up to the 35-yard line, and that jumps to 2.3 points — an increase of 15%. And teams score touchdowns 14% more often with that 5-yard boost to their starting field position. There’s now a real reason to invest in kickoff returns and a real benefit, both on offense and special teams.
Real: The Commanders’ run game is really good
Sunday was sort of an odd performance for the Commanders, who controlled what would eventually be a comfortable 21-6 victory over the Giants with their defense. Daron Payne and Dorance Armstrong led the way for a defense that pressured Russell Wilson on nearly 49% of his dropbacks. The highlight of the game came in the second quarter, when the Giants drove inside the 10-yard line and ran seven plays without scoring. The Commanders gave them a new set of downs with an illegal hands-to-the-face penalty, but after the Giants failed to score with seven cracks at the end zone, Brian Daboll essentially rage-quit the drive and kicked a 20-yard field goal. The Giants also failed four times from the 3-yard line with three minutes to go, long after the game had been decided.
It was an uneven performance for Jayden Daniels, who missed Terry McLaurin for what could have been a long touchdown and wasn’t always at his best. At the same time, the Commanders got into second-and-long situations over and over again throughout the day, at which point Daniels would almost immediately bail them out and march them forward. At different points on Sunday, the Commanders faced second-and-16, second-and-19, second-and-21, second-and-14, second-and-17 and second-and-15. Daniels converted all of those series into first downs in two plays or less, and frankly, he didn’t seem particularly stressed while doing so.
The Commanders aren’t going to do that every week, but they also aren’t going to be backed up in second-and-forever as often. One way to avoid that is to lean more into their run game, which was excellent Sunday. Even leaving Daniels’ impact as a scrambler aside, Washington generated 0.2 EPA per designed run, the second-best rate for any offense during the afternoon slate. (The Dolphins generated 0.33 EPA per designed run, but they ran the ball only 10 times after quickly falling behind.) Doing this against a Giants team with a stacked defensive line and without their best interior lineman in Sam Cosmi is another good sign for the Commanders continuing on this track throughout the season.
While Daniels made an impact and Deebo Samuel took a pin/pull sweep 19 yards to the house for a touchdown, the most exciting runner of the day was rookie Jacory Croskey-Merritt, who turned his 10 carries into 82 yards and a touchdown. Croskey-Merritt’s touchdown and his four 10-plus yard runs came on five different run concepts, which speaks to how diverse and difficult the Commanders’ run game can be to stop. He was clearly comfortable working out of the pistol and shotgun run game, which wasn’t always the case for Brian Robinson Jr., who was more efficient under center over his three years with Washington. Installed in Robinson’s role as part of a timeshare with Austin Ekeler, Croskey-Merritt looked entirely comfortable and capable of immediately stepping in as an above-average back.
One of my reservations about the Commanders living up to last year’s performance is how dominant they were on fourth downs and how so many of their drives required at least one fourth-down conversion to score points. Well, one way to solve that is to score before you get to fourth down. The Commanders didn’t need to attempt converting a single fourth down on offense Sunday. They’re off to a great start.
Fake: The Colts have one of the league’s best offenses
On a day when Peyton Manning was in the building to honor late Colts owner Jim Irsay, Daniel Jones and the Indy offense did their best imitation of the organization’s glory days on the offensive side of the ball. Facing a Dolphins team that seemed shocked to find out they had to play a football game on Sunday, the Colts scored on each of their seven possessions, going an entire game without a punt or a turnover for just the second time in franchise history. (Manning did it once in a 2003 playoff victory over the Chiefs.)
After enduring frustrating performances from Anthony Richardson Sr. and his backups over the past two years, the Colts got a smooth, reliable performance from Jones. He went 22-of-29 for 272 yards, throwing one touchdown pass and adding two more scores on sneaks. The oft-sacked quarterback was only taken down once all game, a surprisingly pleasant development.
While Jones didn’t need to do much with his legs Sunday, there were some positive signs that he might be something better than what we saw over the past two years with the Giants. He went 5-of-6 for 74 yards and a touchdown under pressure. And while Jones averaged a modest 6.8 air yards per throw, he went 5-of-8 for 116 yards and a touchdown on throws traveling 10 or more yards downfield, giving the Dolphins at least some reason to worry that the Colts might hit them over the top.
0:19
Daniel Jones dives in for second rushing TD
Daniel Jones powers in a rushing TD for the Colts.
I’m skeptical of these Colts, but I’m more optimistic about their receivers and playmakers than most, given how much they were dragged down by Richardson’s inaccuracy. I believe there’s a fun receiving corps here, especially if Tyler Warren makes an immediate impact. The rookie first-round tight end led the team with seven catches on nine targets, turning them into 76 yards.
Nobody’s expecting the Colts to go all season without punting, but is it realistic to raise our expectations for what they are capable of on offense based on what Jones & Co. showed us Sunday? Maybe a little bit, but I wouldn’t go much further. The Colts went 10-for-18 on third and fourth down, started three of their drives from beyond their own 40-yard line and played the entire game from an extremely positive game script. Playing with a lead is always going to make life easier for an offense, and I would expect the sacks that have plagued Jones to rear their head more often if and when Indianapolis is playing from behind.
The other issue is that the Dolphins just don’t have an NFL-caliber secondary. Losing Storm Duck to an early ankle injury didn’t help, but he isn’t exactly Pat Surtain. Guys they signed in training camp, such as Jack Jones and Rasul Douglas, were playing significant roles at cornerback. Fifth-round picks Jason Marshall Jr. and Dante Trader Jr. were called on for meaningful snaps in their NFL debuts.
And frankly, the Dolphins looked as if they accidentally ran out their third-stringers for a real NFL game. They were getting smoked off the line, struggling to communicate and sort out route combinations, and couldn’t consistently handle stacks and motion. When they did pressure Jones and he got the ball out, they couldn’t get close enough to Indy’s receivers to make quick tackles. They looked lost. It’s possible that the Colts secretly snuck prime Marvin Harrison, Reggie Wayne and T.Y. Hilton onto the field, but I suspect the Colts will have more trouble moving the ball against the Broncos next week.
Real: The Dolphins’ offense looks cooked
The Dolphins were every bit as bad as the Colts were good on offense. While the Colts were ending each of their drives with scores, the Dolphins were flailing. They ended their first five drives with an interception, a fumble, a punt, another interception and a wildly overthrown checkdown from Tua Tagovailoa that finished the fifth possession on downs. De’Von Achane scored a garbage-time touchdown to give Miami some semblance of a positive moment.
While Miami ran the ball well — turning 12 carries into 78 yards — they fell behind too quickly to have any hope of relying on the ground game. It would be easy to say that Tagovailoa struggled after being made one-dimensional, but he was struggling before that, too. He finished 14-of-23 for just 114 yards with a touchdown pass and two picks. His 2.7 Total QBR is not a typo; it was the worst performance of his career.
Both interceptions, as Steven Ruiz noted on Twitter, came with a defensive lineman dropping off the line and into the middle of the field to serve as a robber underneath. Lou Anarumo was trying to muddy the windows for Tagovailoa and the Dolphins’ offense, with the D-lineman playing underneath and allowing the second-level linebackers to drift deeper into coverage.
With that being said, this wasn’t strictly some schematic hack. Tagovailoa had a relatively open Tyreek Hill on his first interception and just sailed his throw. On the second, he held the ball when his initial read wasn’t open and then threw late to the middle of the field, passing up an open checkdown in the process. That’s bad quarterback play.
The Dolphins couldn’t handle pressure. Tagovailoa was strip-sacked on a play-action pass where Kenny Moore II came flying in off the slot and Achane didn’t abandon the fake quick enough to get a block on the cornerback. Nick Cross came out of the slot totally unaccounted for by the protection from Tagovailoa’s blind side and laid him out for another sack. Indianapolis lined up DeForest Buckner at defensive end on a third down, and the Dolphins decided to slide their protection away from the Colts’ best pass rusher, leading to an attempt to block Buckner from poor angles by Achane and wideout Tanner Conner. That resulted in a Samson Ebukam cleanup sack. And while Hill was open for an easy conversion on a fourth down, Miami’s inability to handle a twist up front meant Tagovailoa couldn’t get to the backside of the play and threw a checkdown over Conner’s head.
The saving grace for the Dolphins might be their schedule. While they have games against the Bills and Chargers, they also host the Patriots and Jets and travel to play the Bills, Panthers, Browns and Falcons over the next two months. It’s not wild to imagine them coming out of that stretch with a presentable record before the schedule gets much more difficult at midseason. This team’s strengths are running the football and rushing the passer, and that’s going to play up when Miami is ahead and mostly fall by the wayside when it is trailing.
And yet, the problems with this team aren’t going away. There’s no reliable help coming at cornerback. The offensive line isn’t going to hold up well in dropback passing situations. The organization basically pretended to forget about Hill quitting on the team in Week 18 last season without any real semblance of accountability, and Hill looked less than thrilled on the sideline Sunday.
Since you’re probably thinking about it, I’ll just tell you that the Dolphins would save just under $14.5 million or so on their 2025 cap by trading Hill, though they would have $15.6 million in dead money on their cap next year as a result. The acquiring team would owe Hill about $11.1 million for the remainder of the season, a figure that drops by about $650,000 every week. I don’t think a Hill trade makes sense for Miami unless the mercurial wideout forces his way out, a move which seems entirely plausible if things don’t pick up with the Dolphins.
0:18
Tua picked off again by Colts
Tua Tagovailoa throws his second interception of the game, with Laiatu Latu coming up with a nice catch to pick off the pass for the Colts.
Real: Bo Nix struggling to make a leap
Broncos fans were understandably excited about what they saw from Nix during his rookie season, and after he led Denver to an unexpected playoff berth in Year 1, they were hoping for a leap forward in Year 2.
That still might come, but there weren’t any signs of it Sunday. Nix struggled badly in a narrow victory over the Titans, going 25-of-40 for 176 yards, a touchdown pass, two picks and a strip sack on a play where he ran almost directly into Titans star Jeffery Simmons. He had at least one more near-interception and didn’t make a huge impact as a runner, with just one successful 11-yard scramble and two sneaks for first downs before a third failed and turned the ball over on downs.
Nix’s 19.3 Total QBR ranked 28th of the 30 quarterbacks who have already started games in Week 1. The good news is that one of the two QBs below him was Tennessee’s Cam Ward, who averaged just 1.8 yards per dropback while spending most of the day running for his life against the Broncos’ pass rush. Denver’s defense had a dominant day, overcoming what was sloppy play by its offense and special teams that helped keep the Titans in the game for 60 minutes.
I’ve talked this summer about how Sean Payton did a great job of essentially shielding Nix last season, using the run-pass option game to create clear decisions and easy completions while mixing in league-high rates of screens and underneath throws in obvious passing spots. There’s nothing wrong with that if the offense is generating first downs and scoring points, but it obviously raises questions about whether that can keep up against stiffer competition. The Broncos had just one win against teams with a winning record in 2024 before blowing out a Patrick Mahomes-less Chiefs team in Week 18. Nix struggled to move the ball in big losses against the likes of the Bills and Ravens.
Here, against a Titans defense that doesn’t project to be very good, Nix managed only nine first downs on 42 dropbacks. He averaged 4.4 yards per attempt and was just 3-of-9 for 52 yards on throws traveling 10 or more yards downfield. Two of those nine attempts were interceptions, and on both picks, Nix simply didn’t see a defensive back who was able to easily undercut his throw. When the Titans got pressure on him, he went 2-of-7 for 8 yards with two picks.
Not throwing deep successfully very often isn’t the same thing as not being able to hit those throws. Broncos fans will rightfully point out that Nix made a great pass on a seam route to Courtland Sutton for a 22-yard score in the second quarter. His ball placement was actually very impressive early in the game before his first interception. But after that, it was entirely scattershot, with throws hitting his receivers in awkward places and creating either incompletions or the sort of tough catches that inhibit the yards after catch that Nix needs to thrive. He visibly showed up tight end Lucas Krull on the field when the backup failed to settle on a route as Nix expected, and while he might have been correct, that speaks to how frustrated the quarterback was about his disappointing performance.
One bad game isn’t any reason to draw massive conclusions, and the Titans might even turn out to be better on defense than we expect. The designed run game eventually carried the Broncos over the hump, as a 50-yard run by rookie RJ Harvey and a 19-yard touchdown from J.K. Dobbins gave the Broncos an 8-point lead in the fourth quarter. If the run game can generate explosives, it’s going to take some of the pressure off Nix in the passing game. If teams do sell out to inhibit Nix’s scrambling, which was a huge positive for the Denver offense a year ago, the designed run game will need to pick up some of the slack.
And yet, it’s also fair to point out that this was hardly a statement game for a second-year quarterback. The story on Nix in 2024 was that he struggled against stiff defenses while trailing and was very good when facing weaker teams and playing in positive game scripts. Well, the Broncos were in this game from start to finish — against the worst team in the league last season. This was the sort of matchup where Nix excelled last year, but instead, he was wildly disappointing in this season opener.
Tougher defenses are ahead. Even if we don’t assume the Colts are secretly the 1985 Bears in disguise, the Broncos get the Chargers in Week 3 and the Eagles in Week 5. They have nine games against teams that ESPN’s Football Power Index projected to be in the playoffs before the season began. Their defense appears to be up to the task of competing with anybody. But is Nix?
