Week 2 NFL Takeaways: Chiefs Expect Good Things to Happen in Close Games

Green Bay looks like it can keep the ship steady until Jordan Love returns. Plus, good signs from the Seahawks, Jets showed who they want to be, Josh Allen looks like an MVP and more.

Butker celebrates with Chiefs coach Andy Reid after his game-winning field goal against the Bengals / Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images

Week 2 of the NFL regular season is rolling and so are we. Just like we did last week, we’ll publish the takeaways on Sunday and update them live through Monday morning. So come back again if not all 10 are here yet …

Jump to a team

1. Kansas City Chiefs
2. Green Bay Packers
3. Seattle Seahawks
4. New York Jets
5. Minnesota Vikings
6. Buccaneers and Saints
7. Arizona Cardinals
8. Tua Tagovailoa
9. Buffalo Bills
10. Quick-Hitters

Kansas City Chiefs

The Kansas City Chiefs are now what Tom Brady’s New England Patriots were—a team that just keeps winning and winning and winning, and sometimes in the most inexplicable ways. Sunday was a big one, of course. The Chiefs and Cincinnati Bengals were combatants in the AFC title games after the 2021 and ’22 seasons, and might’ve been again last year were it not for Joe Burrow’s injury. That means it’s no stretch to think Kansas City’s 26–25 win could determine the site of a playoff game.

And in that big of a spot, the Chiefs didn’t have much doubt about how the chips would fall. Things just came together a little differently this time around, particularly at the end of this heavyweight fight.

There was the flag for unsportsmanlike conduct on Ja’Marr Chase, which turned what would’ve been third-and-7 into third-and-22 in the fourth quarter, short-circuiting a drive that ended in a long Bengals field goal rather than a touchdown. There was the pass interference on Cincinnati rookie Daijahn Anthony that moved the chains for K.C. on a last-gasp fourth-and-16.

There was also a group sitting there well aware of how to take advantage of these things. Because in the biggest spots, the two-time defending champion Chiefs aren’t like other teams. So instead of dreading something bad happening when the pressure’s on, it’s at the point now where the Chiefs expect something good to come.

Which is just what they got at Arrowhead on Sunday.

“There is this snowball effect of success that we’ve had,” kicker Harrison Butker said driving home. “We’ve played in so many playoff games, big-time games where we’ve done well, we’ve succeeded. So you look at this situation tonight and there’s no doubt that we’re going to be able to drive down, get in field goal range and make it. That’s what everyone’s mindset is.

“There’s so much confidence, and that just lends itself to having success. We have a lot of core guys that have been around, that are trying to get this three-peat, that have been here since Patrick [Mahomes] took over in 2018. I think we have a lot of confidence, the players do, the coaching staff. It starts in practice. We don’t take the foot off the pedal when it comes to training camp, practices or even regular season.”

And this week, it was Butker who was tasked with jamming on the accelerator.

In fact, the only drama surrounding him coming through was how it would happen. Butker told me that in pregame warmups, kicking toward the Arrowhead tunnel, he hit a 66-yarder and launched a 72-yard kick that had the distance but missed wide. So going in, he told special teams coach Dave Toub he felt good about kicking from a mid-60s distance.

The aforementioned fourth-and-16 was preceded by a fourth-and-6 (before a penalty pushed it back) from the Chiefs’ 45. That would’ve been a 72-yarder—which was too much, but not by a whole lot. And that illustrates how costly the 29-yard penalty on Anthony that came in that hypothetical kick’s place was. It moved the Chiefs to Cincinnati’s 36, which was comfortably in Butker’s range.

Even if Butker himself never really sees it that way.

“I feel like it doesn’t help me when I’m going out there to kick a game-winning kick and the entire crowd is clapping and excited. I’m like, All right, the game’s not over. If I miss, we’re gonna lose,” Butker say. “And everyone’s like, Aw, great job offense. All right, we’ve won this game. I’ve done a better job over the years focusing in even when the crowd might just think it’s automatic.”

They think it’s automatic for good reason. It pretty much is, and was again in this case. Butker drilled the 51-yard game-winner to get the Chiefs to the winners’ circle Sunday.

The Bengals will try to recover against the Washington Commanders on Sunday in Week 3. The Chiefs, meanwhile, will go forward with their heads down, and pointed toward a third straight title, and fourth in six seasons. They know they’ll be there at the end, because they’re going to keep winning games like this one—and even on days such as this, where Mahomes threw two picks and for a rating barely over 80, and Travis Kelce had a single catch for five yards.

“When you’ve seen guys perform under pressure for so many seasons, you just automatically start to trust them,” Butker says. “And you know how they are programmed. And we’ve seen Travis Kelce, Patrick Mahomes, Chris Jones, so many of these guys that have just stepped up in pressure situations and have performed. And I think it inspires the rest of the guys on the team. I mean, think about how many guys we have that maybe aren’t rookies, but they’re first-year guys with the Chiefs.

“They’ve never experienced winning over 50% of their games. They’ve never experienced the crowd noise Arrowhead has. They’ve never experienced playing with guys like Patrick, Chris and Kelce, that have had success on the biggest stage. And I think it just inspires them like, Hey, if I attack every day like these superstars are, then I can have success, too.”

Butker, Mahomes’s 2017 draft classmate, sees himself that way—especially after his teammates had his back (more on that in my Tuesday notes) after his controversial comments last spring. And clearly, he’s not the only one who’s benefited from it.

It’s not the only reason the Chiefs keep winning games like these. But it doesn’t hurt.

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Willis hadn’t started in nearly two years before notching a win with the Packers. / Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

Green Bay Packers

Week 2 was another notch in the belt of Matt LaFleur’s program with the Green Bay Packers. Malik Willis, for those who don’t know, joined the team on Aug. 26. He became the starter nine days before Sunday’s game against a feisty Indianapolis Colts team. And it barely mattered.

Maybe you don’t want to hang Green Bay’s 16–10 win in the Louvre. But I kind of do.

What we saw Sunday at Lambeau was a testament to what the Packers have built, which was good enough to see Jordan Love through a detailed, extensive three-year apprenticeship, and support him as he grew into a high-end starter last year. This time around, it helped Malik Willis—a Packer for only three weeks—record his second career win in his first start in nearly two years. And LaFleur led the way in doing it mostly by just sticking to his script.

“More than anything, the offense remained pretty much the same,” Willis told me a few minutes after the win. “It’s more of, what am I comfortable with as far as the reps go and what am I not? I think he [LaFleur] does a great job giving me everything and seeing what I like, seeing what I don’t like, and having a feel for that.”

As the game went along Sunday, it was clear that Green Bay wouldn’t have to dip too deep into what Willis liked—and that’s another credit to where the Packers are right now. In the first quarter, the Packers ran the ball 20 times for 164 yards; kicked a field goal to cap an eight-play, 42-yard drive; and scored a touchdown on an 11-play, 82-yard drive. Willis threw it just twice in those 15 minutes, completing both (with a third completion wiped out by penalty) for a grand total of 14 yards.

One of the two was a 14-yard touchdown throw to Dontayvion Wicks on a flat route.

“Got him the ball. He did the rest,” Willis says. “All credit to him. It was great to see the Lambeau Leap.”

The other thing that was great for Willis to see, and a great reflection of the program, was the environment in the quarterback room three weeks ago. He knew Love, having spent time with him at the retreats their mutual agent, David Mulugheta, hosts in Austin, Texas, and backup Sean Clifford, having worked out with him under private throwing coach Quincy Avery. So those two teammates were resources.

“Just coming in knowing guys and being able to communicate with them and have some carryover in the offenses that I’ve been in—this is the fourth offense I’ve been in in three years—is cool,” Willis says. “Just continuing to have that relationship that you can communicate freely and bounce questions off each other, it’s been awesome.”

So Willis was confident going in, and the Packers had a situation that wasn’t going to put him in an impossible spot. And they didn’t early, or late.

The Packers had the run-pass ratio of a middle-school team—53 rushes for 261 yards, with Willis finishing an efficient 12-of-14 for 122 yards, that touchdown and a 126.8 rating. He effectively did what the Packers asked of him, and that wasn’t ever going to be too much.

Which is why it wouldn’t be smart to bet against the Packers riding out Love’s injury and being in position to take full advantage of his eventual return.

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Seattle Seahawks

Smith celebrates after running the Seahawks’ record to 2–0. / David Butler II-Imagn Images

I took two great signs from the Seattle Seahawks’ win in New England, besides the fact that they outlasted a Patriots team in a 10 a.m. body-clock game. First was how Mike Macdonald has such a resilient team, with both of Seattle’s wins necessitating the team riding out imperfect first halves. And second was how well Geno Smith is playing in his 11th NFL season.

As he explained it to me after the Seahawks’ 23–20 win, all of that experience really marked the way he made his most critical throws to beat New England. In particular, it was actually how he combatted an ultra-aggressive Patriots defense and used their blitz-heavy approach to slice right through them.

“I welcome the blitz. I hope they blitz me,“ Smith says. “A lot of teams don’t. A lot of teams come out and play us two-high [safeties]. Today, they wanted to be aggressive. It really didn’t pay off for them. For me, I’ve seen so much football that I just know what I’m looking at. I study a lot of film. There’s always tells out there on the field. You just got to find the guy. I’ve worked on that. For the most part, teams don’t really zero us, but they got them to critical situations and that was their call. That’s what they went with.”

And we can take you through a couple of those.

• The first big one was Smith’s 56-yard touchdown strike to DK Metcalf in the first quarter. Smith saw the zero blitz (rushing the quarterback with no safeties back in coverage) and went back to last week. Denver gave him that look, and he held back an audible, hoping to set up the Broncos to use it later in the game. He never got to, so he still had the audible coming into this week.

“We felt like it was going to be good again this week,“ Smith says. “Got to an empty formation. They went to a rain check, which is their all-out blitz. I got to the right protection. We all knew the signal, got the play off, and then they busted the coverage. They didn’t guard him. [Metcalf] was wide open down the sideline.”

• The second one came on a critical third-and-6 in overtime. Smith wound up hitting Zach Charbonnet in the flat in the face of heavy pressure, and Charbonnet churned out seven yards.

“They went Cover Zero again,“ Smith says. “We kind of scared them out of it when we scored on the big play. We really didn’t get it for the rest of the game. You got to know that these D-coordinators, they’re going to go with what they know. He’s a guy in those situations, critical situations, he wants to be aggressive. He wants to all-out blitz you. Do it at your own risk. I’m not a rookie quarterback … [OC Ryan] Grubb made a great call. That was one of the calls we loved in that situation. Zach was wide open.”

On the very next play, Smith reversed field on a sprint-right pass call, when he saw Jabrill Peppers had a bead on what the Seahawks were doing (“Jabrill did a great job“). With the play dead, Smith spun back to his left and found Tyler Lockett down the opposite sideline for 16 yards.

“Obviously, gotta find 16 in those moments,“ Smith says. “He does a great job of being clutch.“

Two plays after that, Jason Myers banged home a 31-yarder to finish the Patriots and get the Seahawks to 2–0, giving Macdonald, Grubb and the rest of the staff some nice proof of concept for all that they’ve asked of the players the past five months.

So the post–Pete Carroll world in Seattle doesn’t look so bad now. Smith’s a pretty big reason why, but he’ll put his new coaches right there with him.

“Most of the wins in the league are one-score. You got to fight through some things. I thought we did a great job of that today,” Smith says. “I think the message and the tone has always been consistent with those guys. Obviously, they’re great coaches. They got great schemes. They do a great job of calling the game, making adjustments and putting us in positions to be great. I just think the consistency is the main thing.“

Of course, getting that from the quarterback doesn’t hurt, either.

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New York Jets

The New York Jets’ offense has been in a funny spot, with both of their opponents effectively playing keep away from them—but we did get a little window into who they want to be. It came at the very end of their closer-than-it-had-to-be 24–17 win in Nashville. And it said a lot.

The run call to rookie Braelon Allen on second-and-4 from the Tennessee Titans’ 20 with the game tied at 17 was the Jets’ 23rd of the game, and on an afternoon through which they had just 55 offensive plays (after Aaron Rodgers played just 38 snaps in the opener). The result was as subtle as a jackhammer to the jaw. The burly 20-year-old ran right through the Tennessee defense, rumbling untouched through the red zone for the score.

It was the result of the Jets continuing to hammer away until Tennessee broke.

“It just went down throughout the entirety of the game,“ Allen told me postgame. “We had a lot of runs that were real close. To finally get one and capitalize on an opportunity at the end of the game was huge for us. Just a testament to how well the O-line played throughout the whole game, tiring those guys out. We were able to take advantage of that.“

The first thing I’d take from it is what the Jets want to do—which is build a team that has a legend at quarterback, but doesn’t ask him to be one nonstop, because it doesn’t have to.

Despite a rough start to the season, the brass there believes in its defense, and the run game should only highlight the strength on that side of the ball, keeping legs fresh with longer possessions and shortening games. With that formula, the Jets have a shot to make Rodgers even more dangerous, forcing opponents to play his offense straight up.

The second thing here, to me, is what the Jets are going through right now. The league didn’t do them any scheduling favors. They opened at San Francisco, and got back from that cross-country trip Tuesday morning, only to have to fly to Nashville on Saturday. And having to do it after getting their collective you-know-what kicked only added to how deep they had to dig to outlast a feisty Titans team Sunday.

“It was a mindset of move on. Leave it in the past. Prepare for what’s ahead,” Allen says.

Then, the rookie paused and delivered the reality of this spot they’re in.

“As short of a week as we had, it’s even shorter this week. It’s the same mentality coming off a win. We got the plane ride tonight to celebrate it. Once we hit the facility tomorrow, we’re on to New England. That’s the biggest thing is not dwelling on it and moving forward.“

So, yes, the Jets’ home opener is Thursday against the Patriots.

Is it fair? No. But if the Jets get through that at 2–1, they’ll have a right to feel good about it (the tough injury to Jermaine Johnson on Sunday notwithstanding), and this identity they’re building.

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Darnold has gotten a chance to turn his career around in a better situation. / Brad Rempel-Imagn Images

Minnesota Vikings

Sam Darnold is becoming this year’s Baker Mayfield, and there’s a lesson in that. Through two games, Darnold, taken two picks after Mayfield atop the 2018 NFL draft, is 36-of-50 for 476 yards, four touchdowns, two picks, a fat 9.5 yards per attempt and a 71.4 QBR. The Minnesota Vikings are 2–0, and none of this looks like a fluke—particularly after Minnesota beat the mighty San Francisco 49ers 23–17 Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.

Maybe Darnold isn’t ever going to be what many thought he would be when the Jets took him with the No. 3 pick. What he could be, though, is a lot better than most thought coming into 2024.

And so much of that, as was the case with Mayfield in 2023 versus his previous seasons, is simply about circumstance. Darnold’s first NFL coaching staff was fired after his rookie year. His second coach, Adam Gase, ran a system constructed for Peyton Manning that Darnold wasn’t close to being able to run in his early 20s. His third coaching staff inherited him, as well as the second pick in what was thought to be a quarterback-rich draft, and traded him.

If you want the blueprint for fouling a guy up, there it is for you—even after that, in his first year with the Carolina Panthers, his offensive coordinator was fired midseason.

Things stabilized a bit for Darnold in 2022 in Carolina, working at first off the bench and behind Mayfield himself, and then Panthers OC Ben McAdoo. Then, he got a year with Kyle Shanahan in ’23. That flowed into signing with Kevin O’Connell’s Vikings, who offered a scheme similar to the 49ers, and stability he didn’t get early on.

And what O’Connell could offer him was a place to relaunch his career, even if it came with the caveat that the Vikings could (and ultimately would) double down at quarterback in the draft.

“I view it as my job on a minute-to-minute, daily basis to get a great coaching staff and a lot of really great players around him,” O’Connell told me after the win over the Niners. “My goal has been to build him up with a unique opportunity here, give him as many resources as we can within our offense, but also allow him to truly feel that he’s supported, he’s believed in. His teammates absolutely adore the guy.

“Ultimately, he’s working his tail off. He knows we’re getting the version of him that’s had some experiences in this league, both positive and negative.”

Talking to O’Connell early Sunday night, it was pretty clear how hard he and his staff are rooting for Darnold—he didn’t even need to explicitly say it, and it’s about more than just helping the Vikings win games. It also has to do with a guy who, very clearly, is the right kind of guy, one everyone likes, who simply had a lot of things go wrong the past few years.

So now he’s with O’Connell, and Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, Aaron Jones and Christian Darrisaw, and he’s shown what he can do with a better situation. On Sunday, he showed, too, that he still can do a lot of the work on his own, when need be.

Addison didn’t play Sunday, and Jefferson went down at the very end of the third quarter. So when the Vikings got the ball back up 20–14 with 10:16 left, it was on Darnold to extend the lead. He responded with a 14-play, 62-yard drive that ended in a field goal with 3:30 left that, more or less, clinched the win. He was clutch all the way through, and maybe most so on a spectacular back-shoulder seam throw to Jalen Nailor on a third-and-8 for 26 yards.

“That was just a guy playing with big field vision and putting a ball on a rope exactly where we wanted, placing it where it just becomes a long handoff,” O’Connell says. “It’s a good coverage, good defense, good play call by them. We got ourselves a chance on that. He makes a throw right there that I’m not sure many guys playing today are making.”

Darnold, simply put, played Sunday like the top-five pick he once was.

I’ll have more on him and the Vikings in the Tuesday notes.

Speaking of Mayfield …

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Buccaneers and Saints

It’s time to pay attention to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New Orleans Saints in the NFC South. Both are 2–0. Both have been impressive, if in different ways. Both have recent histories of success (though with the Saints, you have to go a little further back in time).

Let’s start, then, with New Orleans, a team that’s slipped out of the national spotlight since Sean Payton departed after the 2021 season, and one that’s been arguably the NFL’s most impressive outfit through the first two weeks of the season. The Saints have beaten their opponents by an aggregate score of 91–29 thus far. The offense has been electric. The defense has been opportunistic, and has been smothering when afforded a lead.

And remember, there are still a bunch of guys around who were on those Payton teams that won the division four consecutive years from 2017 to ’20.

“The biggest thing is the team is playing the game that we need to play to win the game,” Saints coach Dennis Allen said over the phone Sunday night. “That’s got to be our hallmark. Our brand of football has to be a tough, physical brand of football. Run the ball. Stop the run. Take our play-action shots. They’re believing in the type of team that we are. The more you have success doing that, when you preach that that’s the message, that’s the type of team we’re going to be. 

“Then you go out and you do it and you see the results from doing it, then people believe in it more. They get more excited about it. They start realizing this is who we are. This is how we’re going to win. We can be highly successful doing this. Our team is establishing an identity.”

The Buccaneers, on the other hand, really have an identity. They’ve had it going back to Tom Brady’s arrival in 2020,and have sustained now into Year 2 A.T. (After Tom).

Mayfield’s success is, in part, a byproduct of how he’s fit into a roster that’s evolved in a lot of different spots, as guys have aged out and the front office has backfilled their spots. It’s shown in how now more than half the roster is made up of guys from the 2022, ’23 and ’24 draft classes, and how the team handles days such as Sunday in Detroit.

The Bucs went in looking to pay the Lions back for last year’s divisional playoff ouster, and did it without starters Luke Goedeke (part of why Aidan Hutchinson had 4.5 sacks), Calijah Kancey and Antone Winfield Jr., and while losing Vita Vea during the game. They got it on the strength of a six-play, 70-yard drive that put them up 20–16 at the end of the fourth quarter, and the four stops that followed it, highlighted by a turnover on downs, forced deep in their own territory in the game’s 59th minute.

Tampa still has a lot of guys with rings, and that showed when it mattered most Sunday.

So maybe this race will be a little more exciting than you, or anyone else, expected. We’ll have more on this in The MMQB lede on the site Monday, promise.

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Harrison had 130 yards and two touchdowns after a disappointing debut in Week 1 / Michael Chow/The Republic / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Arizona Cardinals

The Arizona Cardinals merit your attention, and Kyler Murray and Marvin Harrison Jr. should get your flowers Monday morning. There is, in fact, one play that encapsulates how great a day those two—and Arizona—had against the Los Angeles Rams.

It was first-and-10 from the Cardinals’ 40, with 8:57 left in the first quarter, and Arizona leading 7–0. The call was a throwback screen to the left, to rookie tailback Trey Benson. Harrison was split wide to that side of the formation. At the snap, veteran Rams corner Tre’Davious White was on Harrison. After the snap, seeing the action to the defense’s right, White fell off Harrison to help cover the screen. Murray, rolling right, looked back for Benson, saw the defense going his way and, rather than turning, kept going right to buy time.

Meanwhile, with White covering the screen, the cloud coverage L.A. had over Harrison on the play busted, giving him an open seam to run through. Murray, still running, saw him getting behind the defense. He wound up and launched the ball down the right side of the field. Harrison collected it around the 25 and outran two defenders chasing him for a 60-yard touchdown.

Marvin Harrison Jr. we love you pic.twitter.com/GE6a9vVabw

— Arizona Cardinals (@AZCardinals) September 15, 2024

Then, on the Cardinals’ very next snap, on first-and-10 from their own 1, those two connected for 15 yards on a back-shoulder throw into airtight coverage from White, igniting a 13-play, 99-yard touchdown drive that staked Arizona to a 21–0 lead.

There were other plays for the two, beyond that, too. There was the time Harrison impossibly kept both of his feet inbounds with the rest of his body extended for the ball at the end line. There was the way Murray got to the fourth man in his progression on an 18-yard connection with Trey McBride on third-and-5 in the fourth quarter.

There were just a lot of things with these two, in the 41–10 win.

So, yeah, pay attention to the Cardinals. It turns out the video game clause in his contract didn’t ruin Murray’s career. And maybe, just maybe, the best receiver in college football in 2022 and ’23 was the best receiver in the draft, too.

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Tua Tagovailoa

Tagovailoa suffered another concussion Thursday against the Bills. / Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

The Tua Tagovailoa situation is big and complex, and too much to draw a conclusion on over the course of a single weekend. So we can start with the tone that Miami Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel struck after the scariness of Thursday night’s concussion and the resulting fencing posture—and that was one of patience. On Thursday night, and again Friday morning, McDaniel declined to put a timeline on anything, which was the right thing to do.

In that short-term window, focusing on anything beyond the real-life circumstances Tagovailoa was facing, and his general health and well-being, would’ve been inappropriate.

But in time, this will become about football, because the fact that Tagovailoa is a football player is why we’re all so aware of his situation. I think the first step would be to put him on injured reserve, to take the pressure off everyone involved—player, team, doctors, everyone. That would sideline Tagovailoa for four weeks. That Week 6 is the Dolphins’ bye works out in this circumstance, in that his first shot to return would be Oct. 20 at Indianapolis.

Obviously, the party with the most at stake here is Tagovailoa and his family, so this starts with him, and I got a good reminder of that being at Hard Rock Stadium on Thursday night. With about three or four minutes left in the game against the Buffalo Bills, Tagovailoa’s wife, Annah, and one of his two kids emerged from the locker room, and spoke briefly with Tagovailoa’s brother in the tunnel before leaving. She was heard saying, “He’s O.K.,” with the acknowledgment that there was a lot of uncertainty ahead.

Tagovailoa has a lot of people relying on him here. Losing him could sink the team’s season. If he were to walk away from football, his absence could destabilize the entire team, and what McDaniel and GM Chris Grier have built. But the people he really has to answer to live under the same roof as him—and that’s what McDaniel meant when he told Tagovailoa that he’s the starting quarterback for his family first.

So for now, as Tagovailoa tries to return to football—and most folks around him think he will—and gets opinions from specialists and team doctors, I think it’s safe to say the opinions that matter most are those of his family.

My take? I’ve covered the league for 20 years, and I’ve seen the fencing posture twice. And on both occasions, it’s been Tagovailoa. I also know that’s an involuntary reaction from the brain that indicates a serious concussion. But I’m not a doctor, nor am I a professional football player. Tough decisions are ahead for sure.

Because of all of that, I’ll just join everyone in saying I hope Tagovailoa makes the right decision for himself, and the people around him.

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Buffalo Bills

I think Josh Allen has to be in everyone’s MVP conversations until further notice. Yes, it’s only Week 2. But the Buffalo Bills’ quarterback is, in a lot of ways, showing signs that he can do things similar to what Patrick Mahomes did the past two years: guiding a team that’s getting younger through a roster reset, as the transition from having a quarterback on a rookie deal to one on a big second contract takes shape.

Gone are Tre’Davious White, Micah Hyde, Jordan Poyer, Mitch Morse and, yes, Stefon Diggs, among others. Which meant, naturally, there was going to be more on Allen in every way.

He’s responded with a 2–0 start and, in Thursday’s 31–10 rout of Miami, the type of game where he gave his team exactly what it needed from him. It was the fallaway, fourth-down throw to James Cook in the flat, with pressure coming, for the first touchdown of the game. It was a 33-yard downfield dime to Ty Johnson in the scramble drill on a third-and-12 to set up Cook’s second touchdown. It was even a recovery of his own first-half fumble.

He was under control. He was a leader. The team never seemed to have much doubt in how the night would play out, the same way it maintained confidence four days earlier when the Bills fell behind early against the Arizona Cardinals. It was also, really, just a continuation of how the team has followed the lead of Allen, who’s stepped up as a leader all offseason.

Whether it’s been having the skill guys in Nashville for a week before training camp, or working with a guy one-on-one, or pulling groups of two and three guys aside, or even just knowing when a guy needs to be pushed and when a guy needs encouragement, Allen’s shown, organically, how deeply he understands how his role needed to shift this year. And in addressing it to me last week, coach Sean McDermott pointed out where people have it wrong.

“People always wanna make it about Stef—it has nothing to do with that,” McDermott says. “It’s just really Josh taking another step, maturing, showing this is his team and growing as a leader. Leadership, I think it’s within us, but it’s also learned and you grow with it. And as you mentioned, it’s your comfort level with leading in a certain way. … It’s been a real pleasure to watch.”

And it shows up every day, according to McDermott.

“You could tell when he came back in the spring, his mind was in the right spot, he was equipped mentally and awareness-wise, and ready to lead,” McDermott continues. “Again, then he just carried it through. It’s easy to lead the first week back in OTAs, when it’s new and fresh. And then the same thing with the first week or so in training camp. But I think more than anything, it’s been just as important from a consistency standpoint.

“That’s what I’ve witnessed as well. There was a play in practice a few weeks ago, during the fourth preseason week where no one plays anyone ... I was ready to go to the next play on the script, which is not the norm for me—usually it’s like, Hey, repeat it. To his credit, he was like, No, we’re going to do it again. It’s just an awareness to the standard and really being consistent with it.”

The early signs are pretty great that it’s carrying over into Sundays and Thursday nights and, the way it looks right now, it shows there are few more valuable guys in all of the NFL.

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Quick-Hitters

And now, it’s time for the Week 2 quick-hitters. Let’s go …

• No one needs to be updated on how good C.J. Stroud is—he threw for 260 yards on a good-not-great Sunday night, which ended in a 19–13 Houston Texans win over the Chicago Bears (just three second-half points wasn’t ideal for Houston). With that established, what was most encouraging on where this Houston group seems to be going was how fierce the pass rush looked. Danielle Hunter and Will Anderson Jr. had 1.5 sacks apiece, and looked borderline unblockable at points. My guess would be Caleb Williams is going to be pretty sore Monday. At the same time, part of taking seven sacks is on Williams himself. The two picks weren’t great, either.

• Justin Fields isn’t lighting the world on fire. But he’s 2–0. He’s running the Pittsburgh Steelers’ offense as Arthur Smith is drawing it up. He’s threatening defenses with his legs and ability to create big downfield shots in scramble spots. So things will be interesting when Russell Wilson is cleared to return.

• While we’re there, the Pittsburgh defense has allowed one touchdown and 16 total points through two weeks. Conversely, the Denver Broncos’ offense has scored just one touchdown this year—that one came with a little over two minutes left in the team’s 26–20 season-opening loss in Seattle.

• Gardner Minshew II had a banner day in a pretty conventional way—he fed his two most talented skill guys, Davante Adams (nine catches for 110 yards, TD) and Brock Bowers (nine catches for 98 yards). Good for Antonio Pierce’s Las Vegas Raiders, being able to go into Baltimore and win like that.

• We’ll find out quickly how real the Ravens’ issues are. Their next three games: at Dallas, Buffalo, at Cincinnati.

• Through two weeks, Jayden Daniels has been the best of the rookie quarterbacks—and by a pretty healthy margin. He’s protected the ball, survived hits and led drives to game-tying and game-winning field goals for the Washington Commanders against the New York Giants Sunday. Some rookies look like fish out of water to begin with. Daniels very clearly hasn’t.

• The Carolina Panthers have played the Saints and Los Angeles Chargers. They’ve lost to those two by a combined score of 73–13. The combined score at halftime of those two games: 50–3. Not sure where the light at the end of the tunnel is in Charlotte.

• The Jermaine Johnson injury adds an interesting twist to the Haason Reddick saga in New York. The Jets didn’t really need a ton of edge help prior to it—Reddick was a bit of a luxury pickup—and now … they kinda do.

• Not sure that we learned a lot about the Cleveland Browns in their 18–13 win over the Jaguars. But next week, we should. Playing a struggling Giants team should give Deshaun Watson a chance to really get going.

• Speaking of the Giants, this is not where I expected them to be two weeks into the season. But I also don’t know how real the job security questions are there. The Maras really like the setup with GM Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll. I think things would have to get worse for them to consider blowing things up for the fifth time in a decade.

• We’re two weeks in with the live takeaways—where we’re posting on Sunday and adding as the day goes on. Hope all of you like it, as the next iteration of The MMQB column that Peter King passed down to me six years ago. And I’d welcome all your feedback. If you’ve got something for me, don’t hesitate to hit me up at albert.breer@si.com.