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THE NFL IS BACK! Today I go over EVERY game from Week 1 of the NFL give my opinions and review what happened
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THE NFL IS BACK! Today I go over EVERY game from Week 1 of the NFL give my opinions and review what happened
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THE NFL IS BACK! Today I go over EVERY game from Week 1 of the NFL give my opinions and review what happened
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In the podcast, Liam O'Keefe discusses the first week of the NFL season. He talks about the surprising win by the Lions over the Chiefs and highlights the strong performance of Lions' receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown. He also mentions the struggles of the Chiefs' offense without Travis Kelce and the need for him to return. Liam also discusses the Jaguars' victory over the Colts, praising Trevor Lawrence and their strong offense. He mentions the injuries to key players on the Ravens and their win over the Texans. Overall, he believes the Ravens can improve and sees the potential of the team. All right, welcome back to the Liam O'Keefe podcast. I'm Liam O'Keefe and week one of the NFL season is already behind us. It sounds amazing to say, you know, we had a great slate of games from Thursday night to Monday. And, you know, we're just going to go through today, talk about them all. I didn't watch all of them, but, you know, I do my research. I figured out what happens. So we're just going to start with Thursday night football and see where we go from there. Starting off with Thursday night football, which was one of the games I did end up watching, the Lions beat the Chiefs, which I thought was pretty exciting. You know, I didn't see that coming. I thought that was a bit of an upset because, you know, the Chiefs, they're missing Travis Kelsey. He was injured. They were missing Chris Jones, who was on a contract holdout, even though I think news broke today that he did actually get his contract. So he'll be out there week two. But, you know, the Lions weren't super, like, crazy high expectations going into this game, you know? Like, people kind of thought that, you know, they lose the first game to Kansas City, but then they start rolling and get a few under their belt. But, you know, they went out. They looked strong. There were some question marks about the Lions' offense with who was going to be their second receiver. And I didn't love anyone behind Amon, Rosset, and Brown. And I think that that's definitely going to be a problem for them until Jamison Williams comes back week six. But, you know, Amon Rugg looks really good. Jared Goff was playing a lot better than I thought. I saw the play where he threw a touchdown where he turned his back to the defense and looked at his receiver and made the play, which isn't something you'd usually expect to see from Jared Goff. That being said, I was still impressed with the Kansas City defense. They came out. They have a lot of young talent. They were missing Chris Jones, which was a big hit. But the defensive line still played well without him, you know? George Karloff just got pressure around the edge, and honestly, the unit as a whole played a lot better than you thought they might have, missing their all-pro D-tackle. But the secondary looked strong. Trent McDuffie is for real in that Kansas City corner. You know, Amon Ross-St. Brown got the best of them a few times, but overall I thought Kansas City was able to play a pretty clean game on defense, you know, only holding them to 20 points. But if you watched the game, you could tell that Kansas City's real problem was offense, which isn't normally something that Kansas City has to worry about. Year after year, it seems they're the top offensive unit in the league, you know? From a Patrick Mahomes, it's pretty hard not to be the best, but, you know, their receivers out there, they looked weak. Obviously, missing Travis Kelsey was a huge blow to them. They couldn't get anything going, it seemed like, without him. Kadarius Toney was getting destroyed all over Twitter and Instagram for his five drops, and one of them was even caught by the defense for a pick-six, which, had that play not happened, Kansas City probably ends up winning the game. There's another one, I think it's like two minutes left, they're marching down the field, he makes another huge drop, so he cost them the game for a bit of it, but none of the receivers really seemed to get open. Sky Moore was pretty much a non-factor, and people thought he was going to be Mahomes' big weapon coming into this game, but no one really, like, ended up being the top guy there and taking over while Travis Kelsey was injured. Noah Gray had a nice game at tight end backing up Kelsey, but it was nothing special, and Marquez Valdez-Scantling is just not a super special guy, he can't make stuff happen, so Kansas City is going to need to get Travis Kelsey back, and the reports that I saw on Friday and Saturday that Kelsey is looking better, it looks like it's just a bruise on his bone and nothing too serious, so hopefully he'll be back in action and he can help my fantasy team, which would be awesome, because I did end up losing in the league that I drafted him, which was unfortunate, but you know, we move on. Moving on to the Sunday games, the 1 o'clock slate, I ended up skipping around a few games, you know, got the new YouTube package, paid about $500 for it, which was insane, but really helpful, I mean, you really get every game, which is everything I could ever want and more, there was a lot of interesting things, so we're going to start with Jaguars-Colts, an AFC South matchup, Anthony Richardson made his debut, that was the big thing for this game, and he looked good, I honestly thought that Richardson looked better than I thought he would in his first real NFL action, because he looked kind of shaky in the preseason, but he went out there and he led the team in rushing, which is kind of what you ask of him, with Jonathan Taylor not being with the team for the first four weeks, but some of his passes were a little off, but that's something he struggled with in college, he'll have to get acclimated to that in the NFL, and that just comes with reps, with game, game time, but he scored through the air and on the ground, but, you know, and they were up for a while I believe, they gave Jacksonville a run for their money, and there was a point where I was like, are they really going to win this game, you know, could Indy really shock us all week one, and it was close for a while, they gave him a good fight, but Jacksonville was just too good in the end, Trevor Lawrence pulled it together in clutch time, and Indianapolis only got within that distance because of the weird fumble play that happened where Trevor Lawrence, he's pressured, he just throws the ball up and then Tank Bigsby, the rookie running back, catches it, and he thinks the play is dead, but DeForest Buckner punches the ball out and brings it back for a touchdown, so that kind of stuff won't be happening anymore in Jacksonville, it's just one of those week one things, you know, breaking the rust off, just getting everyone back into like the full speed of a game, but Jacksonville looked really strong, the Calvin Ridley trade is looking really nice now, they, they went out and they called Atlanta, and they got Trevor Lawrence a real wide receiver one, and it's paying off, he had 100 yards and a touchdown in his first game with the team, which is obviously the impression you want to make, but overall Jacksonville's whole offense looked complete and really strong, their run game was good, Tank Bigsby and Travis Etienne looked strong on the ground, and I even saw Trevor Lawrence run a few times, they didn't really have too many design run plays for him, because that's not his play style, but he took off, he's big, he used his frame, get into guys, and they looked great, man, you know, Jacksonville, I have them winning this division pretty easily, and after week one, that looks like a take that's going to hold up very well, barring injury, of course, however, another team that does look like their season might get derailed due to injury is the Baltimore Ravens, you know, I'm sure people thought I was going to say the Jets there, but we'll talk about them later, they'll probably be the last thing I talk about, but for Baltimore, you know, Lamar didn't look super great, he struggled, he had a pretty bad interception where he was pressured in the pocket, and instead of rolling out and doing Lamar Jackson things, he threw a ball up, the receiver wasn't ready for it, and it got picked by the defender, but I didn't watch too much of this game, but, you know, just looking at the injury report, there are guys who are really important to this team who are going to be out for a while, J.K. Dobbins scored one of the touchdowns for the Ravens, he's out for the rest of the year with a torn Achilles, you know, we'll see how long it takes Marlon Humphrey to get back from injury, he started the year off, so it could be tough sledding for the Ravens this year, which is really unfortunate, because every year it feels like they're primed and ready, but they can just never stay healthy to make it to the Super Bowl, or even to the playoffs, but, you know, Zay Flowers is a real bright spot on that team, he is going to be quite a piece in Baltimore for the next, hopefully, 10-15 years to come. He had nine catches, about 75 yards, he couldn't find the end zone, but the Baltimore passing attack was lacking today, so that'll change eventually. Other than that, the pass catchers didn't make too big of a difference, you know, Odell only had about 37 yards, same with Rashad Bateman, and they didn't spread the ball around on offense, passing-wise, so I wasn't super impressed with what I saw from Baltimore, but I also believe that if they can just stick together and stay healthy enough, they'll be better than they were on Sunday. And they won 25-9, so it's not like they played bad and it was a close game against Houston, they played bad and won pretty handily, so you can see the ceiling of this team really coming together now, if they can knock off the rust and play a little better, I can totally see how Baltimore keeps being a successful team. Houston's offense, on the other hand, was rough. C.J. Stroud started off slow, which is what you kind of expected from him, it was going to take a while for him to kind of adjust to the NFL acclimate, you know, coming from Ohio State to the Houston Texans is about as big of a jump as you can get in college football to the NFL, where in Ohio State you're surrounded by, you know, five-star offensive linemen, incredible weapons, Marvin Harrison Jr., Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave, and then you come to Houston, which doesn't have the best weapons, you know, it's Nico Collins and Robert Woods out there, and the offensive line is rough and banged up already, but you know, towards the end of the game, he started looking better, and I really think that he's going to be nothing too crazy in the future, but he'll be a solid game manager quarterback, he doesn't have the X-factor in any sort of area to make him an elite elite quarterback, but I liked what I saw from C.J. Stroud in the second half of the game, once he felt a little more comfortable, opened up the playbook a little more, and overall just got, you know, the first game jitters out of the way, so we'll see how Houston looks next week. Moving to another AFC North team, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the San Francisco 49ers, man, good day to be a 49ers fan. They looked perfect in almost every aspect of the game. Brock Purdy looks great, he went out there 200 yards, two touchdowns. Brandon Iyuk had 130 yards and both touchdowns all on his own, and Christian McCaffrey even had over 150 rush yards on the ground, including an incredible 65-yard score right down the sideline which, speaking of my fantasy team, helped a lot. And you know, their defense still looks dominant. They held Kenny Pickett and the Steelers to only seven points for two turnovers, and they just look scary, man. You know, there's not much else you can say. They are primed and ready, and there's a reason that the 49ers are my Super Bowl favorites. They have no real weakness on any side of the ball. You can't run the ball on them, you can't pass on them, you can't stop the run, you can't stop the passing attack. Everything about the San Francisco 49ers is unstoppable this year. They have weapons all across the board. They are just insane monsters ready to go. That being said, I am kind of disappointed in Pittsburgh. They had a great preseason. Kenny Pickett looked amazing, but he comes out here, it's real NFL action, it's starters, it's fast-paced, and just kind of looks like he can't hang. He's not really doing anything at a high level. He looked flustered, he was missing guys bad, and they only put up seven points. They couldn't score. And overall, I'm kind of disappointed in what I saw from Pittsburgh. I believe in Mike Tomlin, I believe in that defense, but I just think they don't have it on offense. That offensive line is horrible. They got absolutely destroyed today. Kenny Pickett felt the heat every single snap it seemed like. And aside from T.J. Watt, I really don't know if I see the star power on the Steelers to have them in the playoffs or even anywhere near it. Mike Tomlin, it seems like every year someone wants to say, this is the year Mike Tomlin finally goes under .500. He's not going to do it this year. They're winning eight games, seven games, six games, whatever you want to say. And I'm not going to overreact that much, but I don't like what I saw, and I don't think this team can win 10, 11, 12 games like the hype they got going into this week. Closing out the AFC North in kind of a boring game, but a very unexpected one, was the Browns beating the Bengals 24-3, which was not something I don't think anyone outside of Cleveland had predicted them to do, but Joe Burrow and the Bengals did not look ready for this game at all. I don't know what was going on. Maybe Joe Burrow got that huge new paycheck, highest-paid player in the history of the league, but he was not himself. He was not going with accuracy, precision, anything, and the receivers were struggling because of it. Tee Higgins had eight targets, couldn't catch a single ball. That ruined a lot of fantasy teams. Not mine. Drake London ruined mine, which we'll get to a little later, but Cleveland defense was smothering Joe Burrow. The Bengals offensive line can't hold up, and Miles Garrett, Z'Darrius Smith, Ogo Ogoronkwo, they just got after him every play, and you could tell they made him uncomfortable, and that combined with the Bengals coming out flat-footed just led to absolute destruction on the football field. And DeSean Watson and the Browns offense didn't look awesome either. Watson was missing passes, throwing them at guys' ankles. The run game was not as strong as you'd like with Nick Chubb, and their backup, Jerome Ford, coughed up a fumble, and the Cincinnati Bengals jumped on it. So it wasn't a strong performance offensively from either side, but the Browns looked more complete than the Bengals did, which isn't really something you hear from the Bengals. It's usually the Bengals were the more complete team all around, and the other team was just not prepared, but it was not that way today. I don't want to overreact, though. It's only week one. The Bengals looked bad last year week one, too, even though they managed to win that game. I believe that they're going to bounce back. No one in the Bengals' locker room thinks that this is what their team's going to be this year. They all know what they're capable of, and so do I. I think they're going to be really good. I think they're going to bounce back next week against Baltimore, and that's going to end up being a really good game, despite both of them looking shaky in week one action. The last big thing from the 1 o'clock slate of games, I guess, was Panthers-Falcons, Bryce Young's debut. He did not look super sharp, and neither did the Carolina offense, and the Carolina offense as a whole was not what I expected it to be at all in a Frank Reich. I expected it to be a little bit more West Coast-style offense, where they scheme guys open, they create easy looks for the quarterback, but that really wasn't happening in Carolina. It was a lot of shotgun, Bryce Young, you're going to drop back, you're going to make the read, you're going to make the play on your own, which is a lot to put on a rookie quarterback, even if he was drafted number one overall and is expected to be your franchise guy. It's going to take a learning curve. He's going to have to try and try and try until that offense looks really good, which it might, but with the weapons that they have right now, I just don't think they can be running this offense and being successful. Like 30-year-old Adam Thielen is not getting this team anywhere far, and he didn't. He only had two catches the entire game. He played most of the snaps, but the return of DJ Shark and his explosive production down the field could be really helpful, but he missed this week and it showed. They had nothing going on offense. They couldn't run the ball well, they couldn't pass with efficiency, and the Carolina offense was just stagnant, and the Falcons completely took advantage of it on defense. The Jesse Bates looked good. He forced all three turnovers for Atlanta, and outside of that, he was kind of the only thing that looked good for that Atlanta defense. They got no real pressure. Calais Campbell didn't do much. Grady Jarrett was alright, but not too much of a difference maker on his own, and the secondary outside of Bates was pretty lackluster. I didn't see much I loved from them, but they won the game, so you can't complain about that, even if their offense looked really rough to start, and I'm kind of having doubts about how Desmond Ritter can compete to be a starting quarterback in the NFL. The Atlanta Falcons have great weapons all across the board. They have Kyle Pitts, who was the first rookie tight end to ever get 1,000 yards in his first season. They have Drake London, who they spent a high pick on, who I thought was going to be very good going into week one, but didn't happen. He didn't get a single catch the entire game, and completely messing up in fantasy football, and they still have Bijan Robinson and Tyler Algier, two great running backs who both got pretty good carries, and both found their way into the end zone today. So on an offense with such high caliber explosive weapons, you'd think that the offense would have looked smooth the entire time, but it didn't. They started out really rough. Desmond Ritter was 2-for-2 for negative 11 yards to start the game. He couldn't get anything going, and he got better towards the end, but that's also because the Carolina defense isn't the best ever, especially once J.C. Horn went down. There was nothing back there stopping an all-out attack, and he still didn't look great. He was 15-for-18, so it was a nice completion percentage, but he only threw for 115 yards and a touchdown on a defense that you should really take advantage of. So Atlanta will definitely have to ride the Desmond Ritter train for at least this year, and they won by 14, so you can't get that mad, but it was a very uninspiring 14-point win in my eyes, and I believe that Atlanta is going to be one of the top teams to look for to draft a rookie quarterback in the draft, whoever it might be. The final two games I have to mention in the 1 o'clock slate I did not watch. It was Saints-Titans and Cardinals-Commanders, and from what I've heard and what I've read and what I've seen is that the Saints and Titans offensive lines are both abysmal. Neither team could really get their ground game going, which for Tennessee especially is bad, because if you have Derrick Henry and you're not running him at least 20-25 times a game, you're not doing it right. Your game plan is flawed, so it's something that I noticed could be a really big problem for them. On top of that, they had no real offensive X-factor. They couldn't rely on Derrick Henry, because their offensive line was so bad he couldn't get it going on the ground. Trelon Burks was pretty much a non-factor in this game. He couldn't get it going. Cheziem Okonkwo, their tight end who people had high expectations for couldn't do it, so it kind of ended up just being the DeAndre Hopkins show, where he had about 7 catches for I think only about 50-60 yards. It wasn't anything too crazy, and their offense is just abysmal. They have nothing really keeping that team together, and going into the year, people kind of thought they'd be like a sneaky, alright team that could win 8 or 9 games, but I really don't see it if that's how this offense is going to look for the rest of the year. On the offensive side of the ball for New Orleans, though, they looked a little better. They were able to create explosives through the air. Derrick Carter, Chris Olave was big, and Michael Thomas came back for his 1-2 games a year to play some good football, but their run game was also poor. Their offensive line couldn't keep it going. Trevor Penning, their left tackle was bad. He kept getting beat every play, man. From what I saw, it was rough sledding for him, and he could get better. This is only his first season as a rookie, because last year he was out for the season very early. So there's room to grow there, and I do think the Saints could end up being a pretty solid team this year, even though they weren't able to capitalize off of the turnovers forced today by Ryan Tannehill. He threw 3 interceptions, and the Saints only won by 1, and if you're winning the turnover battle to that large of a degree, and still only winning by 1, you're not the greatest football team in the world. I'm sorry, New Orleans, but they need to just figure out how Derek Carr is going to mesh with these receivers, and how that running game is really going to start going, because Alvin Kamara's gone for 6 weeks, so they have to rely on Jamal Williams and Kendre Miller, who's a rookie, and it'll get better once Alvin Kamara comes back, but for now, they just have to figure out what to do with the interior offensive line to be able to run Jamal Williams through the tackles, which is where he was really most effective in Detroit, obviously, aside from the goal line plunge. Then, obviously, we have Cardinals and Commanders, and I didn't watch this game. This is a game of 2 bad football teams going at it, but one stat I did see is that Arizona was able to sack Sam Howell 6 times, which was honestly impressive in my eyes, because I don't see anyone on that defensive line that could be able to generate pressure like that, so maybe they do have some bright spots on the Cardinals' defense, and maybe they can be an alright, respectable unit instead of what I see as one of the, if not the worst units in the league, but Sam Howell didn't look too bad in his first Rio game as the expected starter. He threw a pick, which I saw, and it did not look good. I don't know what his plan was, but they're saying it was potentially tipped. I haven't seen an angle where the ball looks tipped, but he didn't look bad overall. Jahan Dotson looked very strong in his debut. Terry McLaurin, though, had a really, really quiet game, only 2 catches for 12 yards. He got out-targeted by pretty much every other guy on that offense, and I know he's coming off an injury, but that is not something you expect to see from Terry McLaurin, and it's not something that I expect to see again. He will bounce back. He'll have a better game, but those are really my only takeaways from Arizona and Washington, but Washington had full attendance for the first time in God knows how long, so maybe this new ownership group is gonna bring some light to a team that desperately, desperately needs it. Moving on now to the 4 o'clock games, where there were some really interesting matchups, but there were also some not-so-interesting matchups, and we're gonna start with one of those less-interesting matchups, in my opinion, which was the Raiders and Broncos game, which, you know, it was a 1-point victory for the Raiders. Congrats to Jimmy G. You win your first game there, but I just don't know how long that team's gonna be successful. I didn't watch much of that game, but a lot of the stuff I saw kind of looked fluky and unrepeatable. Like, I don't really believe in this defense that was apparently playing pretty well. I don't think this is a unit that can continue to have success like that all year, and going up against an offense better than Russell Wilson's and the Broncos, I think that the Raiders could definitely be one of the league's worst teams, despite getting Devontae Adams and Jacoby Myers and having a great group of pass catchers. I just don't think it'll be enough to save them from a mediocre quarterback, a poor offensive line, a really bad defense, and a division with the Chargers and the Chiefs. Speaking of the Chargers, that is the team I want to cover next. They play the Dolphins, and that was one of the best games of the week, and one of the best games I think we'll see all year. And on the Chargers side of the ball, it's two main things. Justin Herbert is amazing, but the defense is really, really bad. And you have to feel bad for the Chargers fans at some point, because every year they look to have a really good defense, they make a bunch of big signings in free agency, and they just never turn out, man. J.C. Jackson looks awful. $80 million a year to be a negative, not even a neutral player, to be bad, really, really bad. Tyree Kill went for over 200 yards on him today. And they signed Eric Kendricks, he looks rough too. They can't do anything in the middle of that defense. Those linebackers are rough, they're getting absolutely destroyed every time. They were absolutely petrified of the Jalen Waddle and Tyree Kill crossing routes, and they were still destroyed by them, even though that was obviously their game plan going in. The reason, though, despite that, why this was such a great game was because of the Chargers offense, and they took a huge leap with Kellen Moore as their offensive coordinator, man. The offense looks fresh, it looks new, it's exciting. Like, the run game is completely fresh. Austin Eckler and Josh Kelly are two of the top five running backs in the league right now, in terms of yardage, not in terms of talent or production, in terms of yardage, which really speaks to this scheme. Because last year, Austin Eckler was very poor. The Chargers couldn't run the ball at all. But this year, they were gashing the Dolphins on the ground. And through the air, Justin Herbert, he hasn't missed a step. He looks great. Keenan Allen stepped up, which wasn't what I was expecting. I thought that he was going to be the third wide receiver on that team, but he looked strong. He was getting defenders on post moves and, you know, double moves and everything like that. He looked really strong. So the Chargers offense is rolling, but obviously they're held back by their defense. So now it's time to talk about the team that actually won this game, the Miami Dolphins. Tua had the game of his career. And honestly, as a Patriots fan, I'm a little nervous because he looked sharp. He passed for 400 yards in the first game. And like, the thing about Tua last year was whenever he would throw these deep balls, you would kind of wait for Tyree Kill to like have to adjust and like work backwards over the corner to grab the ball. That wasn't what was happening today. Tua was hitting these guys in stride, allowing them to pick up extra yards. And if he can continue that throughout the whole season, the Dolphins will be a scary team and will have defensive coordinators staying up all night trying to figure out how to stop them. It wasn't just the passing attack that looked good, too. I was really impressed by the play of the Dolphins offensive line, which I thought was going to be a weaker unit since they were missing Teron Armstead and weren't fantastic going into this year. But they were really strong. They completely erased Khalil Mack. He was a non-factor this game. Joey Bosa got a few pressures and some hits. But other than that, I'm impressed by the way the Dolphins offensive line looked. They were strong. They could pass block well. They could run block well. And we'll see if that holds up because they're already starting to lose some pieces. But if that line can play like they did yesterday, they're going to have no problem keeping Tua protected for this year. Moving on to the NFC North, the Packers played the Bears. And oh man, it was a sight to behold. Jordan Love might be the real deal and the Packers might have done it again. They might have gone three in a row in terms of really good quarterbacks. Or I shouldn't say really good. We don't know what Love's going to be yet. But good quarterbacks, they have done it again. He looked strong. He was commanding the offense well. And he lit it up against the Bears. And the Bears aren't the best team in the world despite what some of their fans might think. But Jordan Love looked really strong with three passing touchdowns. The run game looked good. The Packers' offense has not taken a step back despite losing Aaron Rodgers. And because of all this and the lack of success on Chicago's side of the ball, you just got to feel bad. All offseason, Bears fans were talking about how Justin Fields was going to finally break out. And now he's got a DJ Moore, an elite weapon. And it just didn't happen. Justin Fields looked pretty poor. He only had 200 yards of touchdown and a pretty brutal pick that was returned for a touchdown. And on top of all of that, their elite weapon, DJ Moore, that they traded the first overall pick for, among other picks obviously, only got two catches the entire game. It was rough for the Bears' offense. And I really think that it is going to look very different in Chicago a year from now. I think they're going to need to get a new quarterback. I really don't think Justin Fields is that guy. We're in year three, and you haven't seen much of him as a passer. As a runner, he looks great. But they don't use him like that, which is a product of the bad coaching and why I think they might also get rid of Matt Iberfluss during his second year. But he just looks rough. They're not doing what Justin Fields is good at. I think there were only two designed quarterback run plays this week, what I heard. With Justin Fields, he needs to be running read option like three times a drive, man. That's what he's good at. Let him get the ball in his hands, let him create in space, because that's the only elite characteristic about him. He can't pass that well at all. So the fact that they're limiting him like that is so weird, and I just don't get what they're trying to go for in Chicago. So all in all, to put a bow on that game, Green Bay just continues to own the Bears, and Bears fans are going to hate it, but Green Bay is here to stay, and Chicago might be down in the dumps for another year. Another team that was a pleasant surprise was the Los Angeles Rams. They beat the Seahawks very convincingly by 17 points, and there's no Cooper Cup. That offensive line has a bunch of no-names on it. But even then, Matt Stafford was still dealing the football. He is back. Last year he had the injury, and the entire dialogue around him this offseason was, is he going to be able to come back? Is he going to be who he was in 2021? And most people thought he couldn't be that. Most people said Stafford's career is probably done by now, but he came out today, and he looked nice. He was on target, he was making decisions well, and he just looked like a top-ten quarterback that we saw a few years ago. And he was doing it without real weapons. The last time we saw Matthew Stafford, he had Odell Beckham Jr. and Cooper Cup. This time he was doing it with Tutu Atwell and Puka Nakua, who was a guy 99% of NFL fans had not heard of in the NFL coming into this game. No one thought he was going to have the most yards on a team that put up 30 points. So you've just got to hand it to Sean McVay and Matt Stafford. And the Rams defense, who stepped up and held Geno Smith to only 13 points in an entire game. That wasn't easy to do last year. And now this year, they've only gotten better adding Jackson Smith and Jigba, but they managed to shut that team down. I don't know how they did it, but the Rams looked really strong. And honestly, I kind of hope that they keep looking good this year. I'm a Matthew Stafford fan. I kind of like Puka Nakua. He's a guy who I've tried to grab in fantasy football. Now off the waivers, we'll see if I get him. But I'm kind of happy for the Rams that they're continuing the success because their future, it still looks dim. They still don't have too many crazy players. But if guys like Tutu Atwell and Puka Nakua can step up, then I think they won't be too bad going into the future. The Seahawks, on the other hand, you got to kind of hope that this is just a fluke game. Week one, weird things happen week one. Teams haven't found their identities yet. They don't really know what their pros are going to be. So I'm not really too worried about the Seahawks. I still think they're going to be a wildcard team. But it was just a rough showing from them all around, especially defensively. Tariq Woolen looked really rough. He allowed 80 yards. The Rams were able to pretty much run the ball at will, it seems like. They didn't really have anybody on the interior of that defense to stop them. And that's what's contributed to the loss. The Rams dominated time of possession. They were able to just keep the ball for so long, keep it out of Seattle's hands. And that's how you win football games when you're the less talented team, because you can't argue that Seattle doesn't have the star power over Los Angeles, especially with Cooper Cupp being out. But it just didn't matter today. Matt Stafford got it done. And it was it was really nice to see, to be honest. Another thing for me that I thought was really nice to see, and I was really happy was the Patriots offense has taken a big step under Bill O'Brien. I waited all podcasts to talk about this. But I really like the Patriots offense. Obviously, they lost the Eagles one, but it was barely the Patriots went against the NFC champions and didn't look bad. They started rough, though. I was watching that game at the start when Mac Jones had the tip ball for a pick six. And then the immediate next play, Zeke fumbles and they lose the ball again. I was mentally prepping myself for another rough season of Patriots football, but then they turned it around. Mac Jones ended up, you know, firing three touchdowns, 316 yards. He played a really good game. Kendrick Bourne played really good as well for the Patriots. And he had two touchdowns and some really big plays, but they just couldn't get it done in the end. And that's credit to the amazing Eagles defense, who, if I'm being honest, kind of didn't look like themselves. They weren't really getting pressure against the pretty awful offensive line that was starting two rookies at guard. And just didn't really, like, outside of Darius Slay, James Bradbury wasn't a super big factor, and he actually ended up leaving the game due to injury. But I wasn't super impressed with what I saw from the Eagles secondary. And it's not cause for concern, truthfully. The Eagles are a powerhouse of a team. They're gonna, you know, keep winning a bunch of games just like this, and there's nothing that leagues can really do about it. But the main focus and main takeaway for me is that the Patriots are gonna be a really nice, respectable team this year. They're not gonna be the number one team in the AFC, and they're not my choice to win the AFC East, but I do feel like they have a lot stronger of a case to make the wild card in a pretty serious playoff push if they can play like they played on Sunday. One last note on the Eagles offense was, Jalen Hurts is kind of in doubt in my mind. And I don't want people to overreact to that because he is obviously an amazing, like, top six, seven quarterback, but things I saw him do are not things that I would have seen Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen or Joe Burrow do, typically, breaking out of structures, to be specific. When Jalen Hurts was pushed out of the pocket, he wasn't really looking downfield. He was kind of more concerned with what he was gonna do rushing the ball, and when that wasn't there, he would just kind of slide at the line of scrimmage and not try and gain anything or take a shot downfield. And the replayers would show that he had guys open down the field, but he just wasn't looking, and he couldn't hit it. So I'm not sure if that's just a week one thing, you know, he's just trying to get out there and play some football again and not take huge hits, but he did kind of concern me if that's how he's gonna process the game of football this year. And I could be totally wrong, and next week he could come out firing and look amazing again like his old self, but I didn't see that, and was honestly kind of confused why I wasn't seeing it, because he showed he could do it last year. We saw it happen a few times where he'd roll out and hit Devontae Smith or A.J. Brown for these huge plays, but we didn't see much of that today with the exception of one or two. Finally, we're going to talk about the primetime games for this week, Sunday and Monday night football, and truthfully, there's not much to talk about. For Sunday night football, Cowboys and Giants, man, everything that could have went wrong for New York football in the last two days went wrong for New York football. The Giants come out on Sunday night football of week one and just get destroyed. They lose 40-0. They get shut out in their home opener in primetime against a division opponent is just the worst way you could probably start a season. But the Cowboys, they look for real. Their defense is incredibly strong. Their offense keeps moving. Dak didn't have any turnovers, which was nice, so you can see how this Cowboys team can really make it this year if they stick to stuff like that. If they keep getting plays off their special teams and their defense, their offense is going to be able to hold up this year. As for New York, it can't get worse than this. It won't be worse than this. This was the low point of your season. You got it out of the way. Next week, they play the Cardinals. That's going to be a get-read game for them. I imagine they win by two scores. Giants fans, you should treat that as your home opener. I don't even know what's at home, but you should treat that as your season opener and just pretend that that first game didn't happen. I seriously doubt that they're going to lose like that or anything close to like that the rest of the year. Saquon had some uncharacteristic like fumbles and mishaps. The Giants offensive line did look atrocious, but you can hope that they'll just not be going up against one of the best defensive lines in football again. They don't have to deal with Micah Parsons for a while, so that's a positive thing for them. For the Cowboys, you got to feel good about where you're at. Blowing out your division opponent on Sunday night football to start the year, that just shuts the tone for what your team's going to be this year and what you're going to look like. Then the Giants, they just need to wipe the slate clean, forget that game happened, and look towards Arizona. Monday night though, man. Honestly, as a Patriots fan, I was even disappointed. You have to feel bad for Jets fans. Aaron Rodgers, he trots out there. They get hard knocks. It's the biggest storyline of the NFL is Aaron Rodgers as a New York Jet, and then he doesn't even get to complete a single pass before he's out for the season with that torn Achilles. It's just rough, because what do the Jets do now? Do they stick with Zach Wilson? He won them the game. That's something you don't hear talked about. They still won that game with their backup quarterback who looked abysmal last year. You have to wonder what direction they're going to take. They can stick with Zach, or they might bring in a free agent or trade for a guy like a Jacoby Brissett or an Andy Dalton who could probably play better than Zach Wilson, but then Zach Wilson is benched again behind another guy. It's really interesting what they're going to do with Zach Wilson and the Jets now that Aaron Rodgers is out for the year. Wilson didn't look great. It's not like he had his incredible time to shine and he did some amazing plays and lit it up, but what really kept him in that game was Josh Allen looked poor. Very, very, very bad. He had three insane interceptions that just weren't Josh Allen-esque at all. His decision-making was off the charts and honestly, it just kind of seemed like he didn't care. He was just out there being like so unserious and like goofing off it seemed like. He was just like, it's third and eight. I have a receiver wide open, but let's try and hurdle this guy and see what happens. Then he tries to hurdle this guy and it's only a gain of four and they end up punting. That's how you end up losing games. Just because Aaron Rodgers isn't out there doesn't mean you can just goof off like that, Josh. What's up with you? To be a little more serious with it, I think that the Bills, they're going to bounce back, but I don't know if they can now really compete with the Dolphins. I'd kind of move them down a peg in the AFC East because I, going into this, had them as this super elite team. I thought they were going to clean up all their mistakes and that was going to be Josh Allen's main focus this offseason. That clearly isn't true. He didn't try at all to fix his mistakes. He did the same things that he was bad at last year. I'm kind of moving them out of the top spot in the AFC and moving them back into the mix of the Patriots and I guess not the Jets anymore. If I had to put the AFC East into tiers is what I'm saying is the top tier is the Miami Dolphins. The middle tier is the Patriots and the Bills and then the third tier is the Jets. I'm sorry. The Jets, despite winning this game, aren't going to be a serious team this year without Aaron Rodgers. But that's going to do it for me. Thank you if you listened the whole way through. I know this podcast was longer than the last one but there's more to talk about. We went through every game I think. Thank you for watching. Thank you for just supporting me as I try to get better at this. I think I was better. Let me know if you see me. Thank you guys and I'll see you all next time.
