Week 1 NFL Takeaways: Sam Darnold Exorcized Some Demons in Return to MetLife

The ex-No. 3 pick in the draft by the Jets shines in Vikings’ road win against the Giants. Plus more on Jerod Mayo's coaching debut, Caleb Williams's first start, Derek Carr overcoming adversity, and the NFL’s trip to Brazil.

Darnold completed his first 12 passes against the Giants in his return to MetLife Stadium. / Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

The takeaways are going to be rolling in and updated live through Sunday—and not complete until Monday morning. This is a change for us, and I know it is for all of you, too. Keep coming back, and following along, as we cover it all from the first Sunday of the 2024 NFL regular season …

Jump to a team

1. Minnesota Vikings
2. New England Patriots
3. Los Angeles Chargers
4. Chicago Bears
5. New Orleans Saints
6. Detroit Lions
7. Kansas City Chiefs-Baltimore Ravens
8. NFL in Brazil
9. QB poll
10. Quick Hitters

Minnesota Vikings

Sam Darnold’s going to have a really good year. To me, that goes beyond his sparkling 13-of-14 first half Sunday. It’s where he’s been. It’s also where he is.

He’s been through trainwrecks, for sure, with the New York Jets and Carolina Panthers, even if he won’t call them that. He’s also seen what the NFL’s best scheme looks like, and played for a Super Bowl team, albeit very sparingly, with the San Francisco 49ers. And as for where he is? It’s about as good of a situation as a quarterback could have to try to stick his proverbial foot in the ground and accelerate into the second phase of his career.

So, yes, Darnold was impressive Sunday—the aforementioned 13-for-14 start accounted for 151 yards and a score before halftime, and he and his teammates cruised through the second half to a 28–6 win over the New York Giants. But I don’t think it’s wild to think that the 113.2 passer rating he put up in his old home stadium is just the beginning, because playing for Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell, and with Justin Jefferson & Co. sets up an uber-talented guy to do that.

And also because what happened Sunday is, well, what Darnold expected, which is why, when we talked postgame, he wasn’t in much of a mood to be reflective about the moment.

“I feel like I can’t take the big-picture view now—I just have to keep it one day at a time,” he told me over the phone, leaving East Rutherford, N.J. “That’s a cliché. But it’s a cliché for a reason, you know? If I just continue to take it a game at a time, one day at a time, I feel like I’ll be in a good spot. I’m not going to look big picture or what can be in the future because that would be doing me and this team a disservice.”

That said, Darnold had reason to appreciate what he’d accomplished.

MetLife Stadium is where his career was born as the No. 3 pick of the Jets in the 2018 NFL draft, and where it seemed, for a while, to have gone to die. So there was that element of it—coming back to exorcize those demons.

Then, there was the actual progress he’s showed as a quarterback, which, as he saw it, felt pretty tangible on his 21-yard dot of a touchdown pass to Jalen Nailor in the third quarter, because it showed so much of what he learned becoming the starter again late in the 2022 season in Carolina, and then last year in shadows learning from 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan.

“It was just being confident with my eyes and what I see,” Darnold says of the touchdown to Nailor. “Understanding the coverage and obviously Jets [Justin Jefferson] on the bubble screen is going to attract a little bit of attention, being able to hit [Nailor], who obviously ran a really good route, and it was really good execution, just getting the ball out on time. Because if I don’t do that, I’m either sacked or throwing it away. So, I think playing on time in this system is always going to be key for me.”

Then, there was the decision by O’Connell to go for it on the fourth-and-2 in the second quarter that resulted in a three-yard touchdown pass to Jefferson, and manifested how the coaching staff’s confidence in Darnold, even if the team’s quarterback competition ended by default (when J.J. McCarthy was lost for the year duo to a knee injury).

“It was awesome,” Darnold says. “It shows the trust he has in me to get the ball out on time and accurately to Jets—when he’s one-on-one, we have to take advantage of it. It was a really good opportunity and execution on our part.”

There were plenty of moments like that for Darnold on Sunday. But the bigger idea is that there should be bigger ones coming.

So when it came to the day at MetLife Stadium? He said the coolest thing about being back was seeing and saying hello to a few security guys that he befriended over his three years with the Jets.

As for the rest of the story line? Clearly, Darnold had bigger things in mind.

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New England Patriots

Mayo on his first win: “One thing I always remind myself is to be Jerod—keep being myself. I think if I maintain that attitude, we will be O.K.” / Joseph Maiorana-Imagn Images

The first win in post–Bill Belichick New England had a distinct feel, and style, to it. As I see it, that can be broken down with a set of stats, and then a simple fact.

The stats: A 170 to 70 edge in rushing yards and a 10-minute advantage in time of possession.

The fact: The Patriots finished off their opponent Sunday in a most old-school way.

No one expected New England to march into Cincinnati on Sunday and knock off a team with legit Super Bowl aspirations. But there they were at Paycor Stadium, clearly the more physical team, running the ball right down the Bengals’ throats to close out a 16–10 stunner of a win to kickstart the Jerod Mayo era.

The Bengals punted to the Patriots with less than three minutes left, down by the final margin, and with all three of their timeouts intact. The Patriots then proceeded to hand the ball to Rhamondre Stevenson four consecutive times—off left guard twice, and off right tackle twice—to churn out two first downs, force their hosts to drain their timeouts and set up three final snaps out of victory formation.

“That meant a lot,” Mayo said over the phone as he left the stadium. “We challenged our offensive line, and we challenged our running backs to take over the ballgame. And any time you can get out there, and everyone in the stadium knows we’re going to run the ball, and they can still pick up five yards here and there for a first down is huge. It should help us build our culture and team going forward.”

So if you wondered what this version of the Patriots would look like—the answer hit you right in the face. Physical and efficient on offense. Physical and multiple on defense. And smart (winning the turnover battle 3–0 was proof of that).

If that sounds familiar, Mayo gets it. For as much talk as there was about how different these Patriots are from the old, dynastic Patriots, the new head coach still believes in a lot of the same stuff the old head coach always did. And that was also reflected in his message to the players Saturday night before the game, which he summarized as: “No one is going to ride on a horse and save us. This is all we have and all we need.”

“That,” Mayo continues, “is our mentality.”

And at least for one Sunday, it came to life with a team that has been told it is among the league’s worst playing with a very real edge.

Of course, doing it once and sustaining it are two different things. But the Patriots have felt all along that they have a little more than people think they do—something that Mayo recognized in giving EVP of player personnel Eliot Wolf a game ball after the win, and after owner Robert Kraft gave Mayo one.

The truth? They all saw a lot of what happened Sunday coming. In fact, Mayo was a little surprised that more people didn’t.

“When you look at those preseason games, we did a pretty good job up front offensively and defensively,” Mayo says. “I understand what the story has been, but as far as getting movement on the front, we’ve gotten that. Those guys, they try to get better each and every day and we had a physical training camp and it’s showing. …. They hear [the criticism] and responded today. The only way you change it is winning football games.

As for Mayo himself, he understands who he’s replacing.

But, as he sees it, worrying about that doesn’t help anyone.

“One thing I always remind myself is to be Jerod—keep being myself,” he says. “I think if I maintain that attitude, we will be O.K.”

They certainly were Sunday.

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Los Angeles Chargers

Dobbins celebrated with fans after scoring a touchdown against the Raiders on Sunday. He finished with 135 yards rushing. / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

Jim Harbaugh’s marks were all over his first win with the Los Angeles Chargers—a 22–10 knockout of the rival Las Vegas Raiders that didn’t feel that close down the stretch. And it didn’t feel that close mostly because of the very Harbaugh-ish second half that L.A. imposed on Vegas.

After rushing for just 26 yards on 10 carries before halftime, the Chargers bullied the Raiders to the tune of 150 yards on 17 carries over the final 30 minutes. So with all of the subtlety of a forearm shiver, Harbaugh announced his return to the NFL in the same sort of way he came in with the San Francisco 49ers 13 years ago.

Perhaps the surest sign that Harbaugh’s getting the kind of buy-in he’ll need with the Chargers was that, in the aftermath of the win, his players sounded just like their coach.

“Both places I’ve been, Baltimore and here, we worked really, really hard in camp and in the weight room,” says man-of-the-hour J.K. Dobbins. “He holds us to a high standard. That was reflected on the field today.”

Dobbins, of course, knew what was coming because of that experience in Baltimore, where Jim’s older brother, John, has run the show for 17 years. Both have forever leaned into an older-fashioned foundation for their programs, while infusing new-age ideas in that ground, after it’s set. And in Jim’s case, the look of the whole thing has been steadily the same, from the University of San Diego to Stanford to the Niners to Michigan and now the Chargers.

Bell-cow backs have often been the beneficiary of it, and Dobbins certainly was one Sunday.

After having four yards on two carries in the first half, the stocky speed demon blew up for 131 yards on eight carries after the break. Even better, it happened because Harbaugh redoubled his commitment to the run in the second half, and because a reworked offensive line, anchored by homegrown first-round tackles Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt, was starting to lean on the Raiders.

“I think that played a part in it,” Dobbins says. “That defense has some talented guys—they were ready. We shot ourselves in the foot in the first half. Second half we locked in, and we didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot. And the result is the result.”

While the result, and even the look, of the team was true to Harbaugh, the Chargers, Dobbins swears, aren’t close to where they could be in a month or two.

“We are far, we are very far away,” he continues. “Our defense is so good, and they had our back. We had to get it together in the first half, from the jump, and once we do that, we really can scratch the surface of what we really can be.”

We all have a pretty good idea of what that looks like.

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Chicago Bears

Williams passed for only 93 yards in his NFL debut. / Mike Dinovo-Imagn Images

In one way, Sunday wasn’t the way the Chicago Bears would draw up Caleb Williams’s debut. In another way, it 100% was. Let me explain.

Yes, Chicago would love to get a little more from Williams than it did in Week 1 against the rebuilding Tennessee Titans. The No. 1 pick in the draft threw for only 93 yards and a 55.7 passer rating, and the offense he piloted mustered only 148 yards and 2.8 yards per offensive snap.

That said, the Bears won the game—and staged a big comeback to make it happen. They erased a 17–0 Tennessee lead, reeling off 24 unanswered points on the strength of a pick-six, a blocked punt returned for a touchdown and three field goals. Which is how you win when you compile the fewest yards you’ve had on offense in a single game in three years. And, if you follow me here, how you support a rookie quarterback.

“We have to play well around our quarterback—we have to remember he is a rookie,” coach Matt Eberflus told me, as he rode home along Lake Michigan late Sunday afternoon. “He’s going to go through things, in terms of experience and getting better. And he will catch up to the game, because he is good enough. He just needs some time, and the experience and exposure to improve every single week.”

In short, the Bears supported Williams. They also showed the lessons of last year, for those who were there, have carried over—and this is now a team that knows how to win. “The way we finished last year,” Eberflus says, “is a big part of the energy and the culture that we have.”

It showed the Bears’ resourcefulness in the second half.

The blocked punt returned for a touchdown came first, with DL Daniel Hardy—who spent last year on the practice squad, and who got a spot on the gameday roster to play special teams—making the most of limited shots in his first actual game for the Bears. His get-off at the snap, per Eberflus, made all the difference in getting through and getting a hand on the punt. Jonathan Owens (yes, that’s Mr. Simone Biles) did the rest, scooping up what the coaches call a country fumble, and running it back for a score.

“Jonathan Owens did a really good job scooping and scoring,” the coach continued. “He just took it on the run, because we talk about city fumbles and country fumbles—city fumbles are in a big group of people and country fumbles are sitting in wide open spaces. So yeah, really good return.”

Then, a Will Levis throwaway gone awry was picked off by Tyrique Stevenson with the Bears down 17–16, and Stevenson ran it back to give Chicago its first lead at 24–17. Two defensive stops later, and Chicago had its win, not needing theatrics from Willams to get it.

It’s also worth noting that, as Eberflus sees it, it wasn’t all bad for Williams.

He had his downs, for sure. But there was also plenty for the 22-year-old to feel good about and to build on moving forward.

“The first rule for a quarterback is protecting the football, and he did that well,” Eberflus says. “That’s the No. 1 job of a quarterback. The next thing he did well is to have good flow and operation—he did that, too. He had one delay [of game penalty], and I took that because it was the second half, and I thought we might need those timeouts. Typically, I would take a timeout like I did in the first half, but it was two plays among all plays that he was in and out of the huddle and had good operation. So I thought that was good, too.”

So, no, Williams wasn’t the Superman the Bears expect him to be someday, but he didn’t have to be.

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New Orleans Saints

Carr tossed three touchdown passes against the Panthers. / Stephen Lew-Imagn Images

I definitely have a better appreciation for Derek Carr as a quarterback now. And part of it goes back to a conversation I had with someone who’d worked with him on the Raiders. This person and I were having a conversation over the summer about how young quarterbacks who succeed—Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, etc.—usually have good situations to thank for setting their NFL path.

Anyway, I made the comment that Andrew Luck is the only first-round quarterback I could think of that overcame a bad situation early in his career and thrived.

This person’s response? What about Derek?

He was right. Carr is now on his fifth head coach. He’s had an owner that long wanted to replace him. He went through a franchise moving. He’s played in different systems, with different teammates and gone through fits and starts throughout, and somehow, someway, always plays … pretty well.

On Sunday, he did more than play pretty well. He knocked it out of the park. Yes, it was against the Carolina Panthers, maybe the worst team in the league. But with another new OC, in Klint Kubiak, in his ear, Carr was on it. New Orleans won 47–10 in Week 1’s most dominant performance, and Carr posted a 142.5 passer rating.

“I appreciate you noticing,” Carr said, with a laugh, postgame. “It hasn’t been easy. But at the end of the day, no one cares. We all just want results. I’ve kept my head down and been faithful to who I am and what I believe in. Just as a man and Christian, I want to be a great husband and dad. When it comes to football, I’ve just tried to be the best quarterback that I can be. When you go through that process, even when it’s hard and it’s not going your way, you keep doing the right things.

“Then you have a good day like today that our team was able to have, and it shows you the hard work works. One win is hard to get, and we are thankful.”

And maybe we’ve all forgotten about a proud Saints team too easily. They’re not where they were with Drew Brees and Sean Payton, but they haven’t been too far off—going 7–10 and 9–8 the last two years without Payton, and 9–8 the year before that after losing Brees.

Sunday showed there could be a little something there. They rushed for 180 yards. Against a defense geared up to stop Chris Olave, Carr’s 19 completions went to eight different receivers. The defense held the Panthers to 2.9 yards per carry and Bryce Young to a 32.8 passer rating. Again, it was Carolina. But the Panthers are an NFL team, and the Saints beat them like a directional school.

So I’d just keep an eye on them.

“We won nine games [last year] and that’s fine, but it’s not our standard,” Carr says. “When you don’t win enough, no one is going to respect you. That is what it is, whether it’s right or wrong. You use everything for motivation. Like Michael Jordan during The Last Dance, you can make up stories in your head and doing all that. But for me and for our guys, we just kept our mindset so locked in on the job, not worrying about what’s being said on the outside.

“I was just so proud of how we attacked the offseason, and to us in the building we felt like we were ready to play this season. We felt like we had a good team.”

It looks like they do.

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Detroit Lions

Montgomery (5) celebrates scoring the overtime winner Sunday night against the Rams. / Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK

That Lions win was stylistically impressive. The Lions have arguably the best offensive line in football. They have a bulldozer of a back in David Montgomery to complement Swiss Army knife Jahmyr Gibbs. So the idea of the Lions loading behind Taylor Decker, Frank Ragnow and Penei Sewell, and jamming it down an opponent’s throat in a critical spot should surprise just about no one.

Stopping it is another matter altogether. What should become a really good Los Angeles Rams defense (tough to speak in absolutes on units in Week 1) couldn’t pull it off when it mattered on Sunday night.

The Lions won the toss at the start of overtime, took the ball and, from there, things went like this: 12-yard reverse to Kalif Raymond, Montgomery off-tackle for 21 yards, Montgomery up the middle for nine, Jared Goff swing pass to Gibbs for 10, Gibbs on a counter for three, Montgomery on a draw for six, Montgomery up the middle for eight and, finally, Montgomery up the middle again for the game-winning one-yard touchdown.

Detroit covered 30 yards, and its only third down was a third-and-1 from the Rams’ 1 on the seventh play of an eight-play drive.

Add that to the job the Lions’ defensive front did behind Aidan Hutchinson (one sack, four quarterback hits) and Levi Onwuzurike (half a sack, two quarterback hits) in helping limit the Rams’ vaunted run game, and getting to Matthew Stafford in key spots, and it’s pretty clear Detroit will be good again for a lot of the same reasons it has been the past couple of years.

It’s tough to beat a team as good on the lines as these Lions are.

“At some point, I knew our willpower needed to show up, and it did in all three phases to get to OT and finish it there,” coach Dan Campbell says, via text. “David Montgomery and our OL took that game over and finished it. It wasn’t the cleanest game but we’re a resilient team … always will be!”

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Kansas City Chiefs-Baltimore Ravens

Worthy scored a pair of touchdowns in his rookie debut against the Ravens on Thursday night. / Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images

My biggest takeaway from Thursday night’s opening game is that neither team was what they’re going to wind up being this fall. But with the Kansas City Chiefs, at least, we got a little taste of where they’re going. And the story we’ll tell on this goes back to Kansas City’s Wednesday walkthrough.

In the Chiefs’ second preseason game, first-round rookie Xavier Worthy fumbled a reverse. So it may have surprised him, when a coach came over to him at the walkthrough, and told Worthy that they’d scripted to give him the ball on another one three plays into the opener.

“Coach,” Worthy said, “I’m taking it to the crib.”

The call wound up coming on the Chiefs’ fifth snap.

The rest went according to plan. Mahomes carried out a fake to Isiah Pacheco, who flipped the ball back to Worthy, who hit the edge, put his foot in the ground and accelerated through the Ravens’ defense for an eye-popping 21-yard touchdown on his first NFL touch. The aggression and confidence with which the rookie executed got his coaches’ attention.

It’s also a good sign that, with a little more time, Kansas City’s vision for its 2024 offense will come together. Worthy will keep getting experience and growing. Marquise “Hollywood” Brown will get healthy. Both will give the team the kind of ball-tracking deep threats (and Worthy’s already shown great feel for running through the zone looks Kansas City gets) that the Chiefs haven’t had since Tyreek Hill was traded to the Miami Dolphins. And those guys’ ability to stretch the defense should create space for Rashee Rice and Travis Kelce to rack up a ton of yards after the catch.

Rice, for his part, also took a step, looking leaner and quicker than he did as a rookie, and running fast and violently after the catch the way Sammy Watkins once did for the Chiefs. Put it all together, and you can see, though they weren’t there yet, why the Chiefs are so optimistic that their offense will be better than the one that won the Super Bowl last year.

As for the Ravens, well, everyone saw the issues they have up front, with 60% of their line from the 2023 AFC title game gone. But it’s not just losing Morgan Moses, Kevin Zeitler and John Simpson. It’s that the guys replacing them—third-year guard Daniel Faalele, second-year guard Andrew Vorhees and rookie right tackle Roger Rosengarten—entered the season with one career start between the three of them. So that things were uneven in Week 1 shouldn’t surprise anyone. Making these calls was always a bet on Baltimore’s ability to draft and develop.

It’s fair to expect, based on Baltimore’s track record, that it’ll look different in a few weeks. Just like it’s safe to say, in the Chiefs’ case, Worthy’s big-play impact is just the tip of the iceberg in the reimagination of that offense.

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NFL in Brazil

I think the NFL’s maiden voyage to Brazil was a mixed bag. We can start with the good, and there was a lot of it—the league has a legit market to mine there, and São Paulo is the biggest city in the Americas. So getting the reception the NFL did there was a big win.

By all accounts, the game was well-received locally, and on a night when the Brazilian national soccer team was playing. Now, it’s not like the American football game was challenging the futbol in the department of relevance down there, but even making a small dent on a night like that is meaningful.

Also, after talking to those who were there for Packers-Eagles, it sounds like it was a unique, memorable atmosphere in the stadium. It was loud, the sound in the stadium was much different than it would’ve been stateside, with horns and singing, and stuff you’d be more likely to see at a soccer game. The crowd was a melting pot of expats, traveling Americans and native Brazilians, too. As for those working in the hotels and around the game, everyone I talked to said those sets of locals were tremendous with the teams.

Then, there’s the other side of the coin, which starts with the fact that the players were told not to leave their hotels. The Eagles stayed in a Marriott near the airport, so there wasn’t much temptation to pull the Philly guys off the premises. The Packers, conversely, were downtown in what was described to me as a beautiful J.W. Marriott, but in an area that didn’t prompt many people, even those who weren’t told to stay in, to go out.

The field was another problem—slick and soft, and both teams knew it’d be a problem after taking a first look at it during Thursday walkthroughs. It was so slippery, in fact, that both teams went away from playing man coverage, seeing how hard it was for guys to track opposing players, and change direction, and transition in and out of breaks. Of course, it’d be tough to blame the field for Jordan Love’s injury. But it was unquestionably a problem.

And, finally, the logistics were also an issue. As the home team, the Eagles chose the hotel closest to the airport rather than downtown, and even in a spot close to the stadium the commute on game day was 45 minutes. From downtown to the stadium for the walkthrough Thursday, it was an hour and 45 minutes for the Packers, and for the game Friday, it was two hours. An early bus Green Bay sent over Friday, before the players went, actually had a commute of two hours and 45 minutes.

So all in all, call this one a mixed bag. I don’t think teams will be signing up for the 10-hour (or so) flight from the States the next time the league decides to go to Brazil. But it’s easy to see where gaining a foothold there makes sense for the league. And some of the warnings players got—such as the ones not to take their phones out of their pockets in public—probably did help, even if the league took some public relations hits for it last week.

The next international frontier, by the way, is Spain, with the NFL ready to head there in 2025.

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QB poll

I love doing my annual quarterback poll because I think it can reveal some things about how evaluators see the future of NFL players. For the uninitiated—every year, after final cuts, I scramble to ask as many quarterback-adjacent NFL folks (GMs, assistant GMs, scouting directors, head coaches, OCs, quarterbacks coaches, etc.) to rank whom they think will be the league’s five best quarterbacks at the end of the year.

I think it’s different in a couple of ways. 1) I gather all the votes in a very small window—between the cutdown and the NFL opener—so everyone has full context, from the end of the last season to the doorstep of the new season. 2) Since I’m asking for folks to project to the end of the season, you get a good look at how people see the future for these players.

So with that in mind, I’d encourage you to check the results, as part of a column that I wrote (and in which Patrick Mahomes won for a fifth straight year). And, here, I’ll offer you some of my top takeaways from going through the exercise again in 2024 …

• C.J. Stroud is the guy rising right now. He finished alone in fifth place—a good distance behind the Nos. 2 to 4 cluster of Joe Burrow, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson, and a good bit ahead of the sixth-place finisher Matthew Stafford. Clearly, NFL people see what Stroud did as a rookie as sustainable.

• Caleb Williams landing on three ballots was notable. One reason I limit these to top five is I want people to have to draw the line on who is truly elite. So to get a rookie’s name from three different evaluators is pretty interesting. It’s also a nod to Chicago Bears GM Ryan Poles for building the sort of roster for Williams that has so many people believing a big rookie year is coming.

• Stafford’s bounceback was pretty significant. His highest finish in my poll came in 2021, after he was dealt to the Los Angeles Rams. That year, he was sixth, and appeared on 23 of 62 ballots. He backslid to seventh in ’22, then ninth last year (he was only on four ballots in ’23). This year, he was back up to sixth, and on 27 of 85 ballots. My feeling is that’s just the respect that NFL people have for his football mind, and the drive that brought him back from injury.

• It was good to see Jackson climb the list—seeing him dismissed by some, and finishing seventh, eighth and seventh the past three years, was always confounding. This year, he jumped to fourth, and was nipping at the heels of Burrow and Allen, in large part thanks to his growth as a passer, fueled (in part) by the addition of offensive coordinator Todd Monken in 2024.

• Jalen Hurts experienced the biggest dropoff, going from sixth to 13th place, and from appearing on 39 ballots to landing on only four this year. The reason, to me, is simple—people saw the late-season collapse last year, and correlated it to how good ex-Philadelphia Eagles OC Shane Steichen had journeyman Colts QB Gardner Minshaw II playing in Indianapolis, and figured there was smoke and mirrors to 2022. Maybe, but we should know on that soon.

• I was surprised to see Justin Herbert tumble, too. He went from fourth to eighth, and from making it on 52 ballots to just 11. I think he’s going to take a big step as a player with Harbaugh, who has always gotten more from his quarterbacks by asking less of them. But, clearly, folks were spooked by the foot injury he sustained in camp.

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Quick Hitters

The Bucs were all smiles in a comfortable win over the Commanders. / Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images

We’ve got our first quick-hitting takeaways of the 2024 NFL season. Let’s dive into those now …

• At some point, we’re going to appreciate the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for what they’ve accomplished the past four years. Until then, they’ll keep winning games like Sunday’s, where they kept the Washington Commanders at an arm’s length for three hours before knocking them out, despite losing their top three guys at corner, which was a question area for them already.

• That said, while it was a rough opening weekend for the rookie quarterbacks in general, I thought Jayden Daniels looked the most comfortable. That makes sense, too, since my sense is the Commanders have bent the most, scheme-wise, to fit their first-round signal-caller.

• The Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins deserve credit for riding out tough starts and coming through with big wins. Buffalo was behind 10–0 at home to the Arizona Cardinals; Miami was down 14–0 at home to the Jacksonville Jaguars. The two face off in South Florida on Thursday, in what will be an important early-season matchup, and one that could impact playoff seeding.

• I wonder if the cost of the contract negotiations with Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins hit the Cincinnati Bengals this week when Higgins didn’t suit up. He’s dealing with a hamstring injury. And Chase was out there, but after having sat out a lot of training camp. If these things affect the Bengals’ ability to chase that elusive Lombardi Trophy, I could see where there could be regret down the road.

• Tyreek Hill’s camp is not pleased with the Miami-Dade Police Department’s handling of his traffic stop Sunday morning for reckless driving. They’re considering their options now, including suing the cops for their behavior toward Hill.

• We’ll have more on Dak Prescott’s deal in The MMQB Lead on the site Monday. For now, though, it’s pretty wild that we have a $60 million man in the NFL. It was just six years ago that Matt Ryan became the league’s first player to break the $30 million per season barrier. Which means the top of the quarterback market has doubled since 2018.

• Deshaun Watson still doesn’t look right. Maybe I’m overreacting to Week 1. But he doesn’t look comfortable, and hasn’t in a long time, and it’s getting hard to see that changing the longer this goes on.

• T.J. Watt is still a monster, and the Pittsburgh Steelers’ defense is really good. I’ll also be interested to see whether Pittsburgh goes back to Russell Wilson. Justin Fields was solid, but not spectacular. And there’s still a belief in some corners of the building that there’s a considerable amount of upside Fields gives the offense that Wilson can’t.

• While we’re there, it’s fair to wonder whether we’re approaching that point with Drew Lock and Daniel Jones for the New York Giants—though Jones does deserve some benefit of the doubt coming back off the ACL.

• This summer, Seattle Seahawks people would tell anyone who’d ask about the kind of year Kenneth Walker III was about to have. And just a week into the season, it looks like he has started to have it, with 103 rushing yards and a touchdown against the Denver Broncos.