1) The Bears are who we thought they were. This team literally teaches us the Bane lesson from The Dark Knight Rises every season: there can be no true despair without hope. “They got Ben Johnson!” “Look at all these weapons they have on offense, Caleb’s gonna light it up!” “The Lions look cooked, and the Vikings are starting a dude who’s never started an NFL game before!” At this point, wake me up when they’ve won seven games. Then I’ll get excited. Until then, this is me.
2) Good for Justin Fields.
I don’t care what team he plays for: I’m gonna root for the guy. And damn it if he didn’t play one of the best games we’ve seen from him in the NFL, especially as a pocket passer. He’ll never be Tom Brady or Peyton Manning back there. But that version of Fields as a thrower mixed with his running ability has the potential to be a good NFL starter—if he can manage it for more than 3-4 games a year (remains to be seen). Notice how I didn’t say I wished he were still the Bears’ QB…because I don’t. Like it or not, the Bears’ process behind trading Fields and starting over with Williams is now and always will be correct. Also, if you think the Bears would have gotten the best out of him, you haven’t been paying attention.
3) The Ravens are masochists. Lamar Jackson might be the best player in the NFL. Again. Their team started off Sunday night’s game looking like a Super Bowl contender. Again. And these mfers blew another monster lead to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Again. No team has mastered the art of looking absolutely unbeatable for three quarters and gagging all of it away in the fourth like the Ravens under John Harbaugh, whose teams have now blown 17 double-digit leads in his career.
4) Put every Chiefs-Chargers game in primetime from now on. The plethora of online clowns who try to tell us Justin Herbert isn’t good because his teams find ways to throw up on themselves in crunch time had no choice but to acknowledge his brilliance as he kept Patrick Mahomes chilling on the sideline to close out that Friday night game. He’s been this good. Hopefully, his team allows him to prove it. Mahomes, meanwhile, isn’t getting paid enough for the magic he has to work with this version of the Chiefs offense to make it do…anything. And he’ll probably still get them to the AFC Championship. Also, more games on YouTube, please. Gives me an excuse to make sure my five-year-old can’t hog the app.
5) Josh Allen has had an insane year. It should be illegal for one guy to win so much in such a short period of time, from winning MVP to marrying Hailee Steinfeld to capping off quite possibly the greatest Week 1 game we’ve ever witnessed with a game-winning comeback. It’s even crazier when you remember he couldn’t hit air with a football in college or his first season in the NFL and is now clearly putting himself on a Hall-of-Fame trajectory. Also, why does he just seem like a really chill dude? Can’t even hate him.
6) The Jalen Hurts supremacy has begun. Until further notice, that guy owns the NFC at this point. Jayden Daniels is nice with it. Caleb might be coming (eventually). Whatever. Call him a system QB, or say the Eagles and Saquon Barkley carried him to a Super Bowl MVP if you want. Hurts is joining the exceedingly rare cast of QBs that I swear finds a way to improve every single year. He refuses to plateau. Thank goodness, too, because my fantasy needs this dude to ball real bad.
7) Score one for the eye test crowd. The end result and stats didn’t fully show it, but Dak Prescott had one of the coolest games I’ve ever seen on Thursday night. Just slinging literal rockets all over the field with no regard for anything the defense was doing, and they were all straight dots. But if all you do is box-score watch and go by fantasy numbers, you wouldn’t get it. Last year, it felt like the QB play in Week 1 was a little ugly. This year, we got treated to some gems to kick things off. Tough scene for the “Cover 2 is ruining the NFL” crowd.
8) Stupid Aaron Rodgers… Why did the dumb Jets have to go cough up a fumble on a kickoff return to allow an easy TD, and why did Chris Boswell have to nail that 60-yard field goal to win the game so Rodgers could have revenge against the team that dumped him for sucking at his job last year? I hate it when smug people get the last laugh. Rodgers and the Steelers will be in Chicago on November 23. Hopefully, the Bears will have themselves figured out by then, because I don’t think I can handle another Rodgers win over Chicago to close out his NFL career.
9) How long until Mike McDaniel and Brian Daboll get fired? McDaniel might make it to the end of the year given how “meh” the AFC East is aside from Buffalo. But Daboll? Unless Jaxson Dart swoops in to save the day (because that always happens with rookie QBs, right?), he might not make it past midseason. How you gonna let Daniel Jones walk out the door, and he immediately looks better than he ever did with you? Sometimes, guys are just really good at being offensive coordinators, not head coaches. Hopefully, Ben Johnson doesn’t become the next guy we’re saying that about.
10) The Lions really might be cooked, for real. Maybe the Packers are really that good (refusing to believe that right now out of principle). Maybe not. Either way, the Lions looked terrible on Sunday, from top to bottom. Almost like losing your three star assistant coaches (Ben Johnson, Aaron Glenn, and Tanner Engstrand) in one offseason is bad for your team. Dan Campbell’s first opportunity to show us he doesn’t purely coach on vibes didn’t go very well. But at this point, I’m still taking them over the Bears.
