Isn’t it great to have football back in our lives?
It’s been seven long months since the Super Bowl, and I had forgotten just how fun, thrilling, disorienting and exhausting an NFL Sunday can be. If you, like me, are watching the Sunday Ticket package and multiple screens, these are just some of the things you were trying to keep an eye on in the first three hours after Sunday’s kickoff:
The Jaguars got off to an impossible start. Jacksonville was the biggest underdog of Week One, a double-digit dog at Philadelphia. So what did the Jaguars do? Just jump out to a 17-0 lead. Eagles quarterback Nick Foles, who had just four turnovers all season in 2013, had three turnovers in the first 20 minutes of Sunday’s game. An undrafted Jaguars rookie named Allen Hurns had 100 yards and two touchdowns in the first half. The Jaguars, who never led by more than two touchdowns at any point during the entire 2013 season, led 17-0 at halftime. It looked like it was going to be the craziest Week One upset we’ve ever seen.
And then the Eagles put a severe beating on the Jaguars in the second half, rolling to a 34-17 win. Foles ended up with 322 passing yards, LeSean McCoy ended up with 115 yards from scrimmage, and the Eagles looked every bit as good as we’d expect them to look in Year 2 of Chip Kelly’s offense. They just needed that first-half wakeup from the Jaguars.
J.J. Watt was dominant. I’m 38 and I’ve been watching football all my life, and I was trying to think of any players I’ve ever seen who dominate on defense like Watt, who turned in another great game for Houston in Sunday’s win over Washington. All I could come up with was Lawrence Taylor and Reggie White. Comparing anyone to L.T. and the Minister of Defense feels like sacrilege, but that’s the kind of player Watt is: He doesn’t just beat people, he makes them look silly. An offense can make keeping Watt away from the quarterback its top priority and Watt will still get there.
Here’s Watt’s stat line on Sunday: One sack, two tackles for loss, five quarterback hits, one pass deflection and one blocked extra point. He wasn’t just the best player on the field in Houston’s win over Washington, he was the best player in any NFL game on Sunday. He’s that good.
The Browns looked awful . . . then made a game of it. It’s difficult to overstate how pathetic the Browns looked in falling behind 27-3 at halftime in Pittsburgh. Their defense let Ben Roethlisberger roll up 211 passing yards in the first 20 minutes, and the offense looked like it would provide nothing of interest than waiting to see how long it would be until Brian Hoyer was benched for Johnny Manziel.
And then something amazing happened: The Browns actually played good football on both sides of the ball. Hoyer began to take command of the offense, rookie running back Isaiah Crowell scored two touchdowns, and within 20 minutes of the second half the score was 27-27. The Steelers did end up winning the game on a last-second field goal, but the Browns showed they can be a fun team to watch. Even when Manziel never leaves the bench.
Simultaneous overtime in Atlanta and Chicago. Three hours of football wasn’t enough, so two of the 10 early kickoffs on Sunday went into overtime: A surprising game in Chicago where the Bills jumped out to an early lead over the Bears, and a wild back-and-forth battle in Atlanta where the Saints and Falcons traded body blows like two boxers in a 12-round fight.
Fred Jackson had one of my favorite plays to win the game for the Bills in overtime, bursting 38 yards and pushing Bears safety Chris Conte out of his way at the end of the run before finally going out of bounds at the 1-yard line, setting up the Bills’ game-winning field goal. That was such a great run by Jackson, the oldest running back in the NFL at 33 years old. And it was a surprising upset for the Bills, who may just be a better team than anyone realized.
But the Falcons-Saints game was even better. Drew Brees completed 29 of 42 passes for 333 yards and a touchdown, but he was outplayed by Matt Ryan, who completed 31 of 43 passes for 448 yards and three touchdowns, with no interceptions. The Saints got the ball first in overtime, but Marques Colston fumbled, the Falcons recovered, and Matt Bryant hit a 52-yard field goal to win it. The Saints swept the Falcons last year and everyone is picking the Saints to win the NFC South this year, but the Falcons showed they’re serious about getting back on top of the division. That was a great football game.
The Patriots found themselves in last place. Of all the day’s upsets, the Patriots’ loss to the Dolphins may have been the most significant, because that result (coupled with the Bills and Jets winning) meant the Patriots are all alone in last place in the AFC East for the first time since before Tom Brady was New England’s starting quarterback. All offseason there’s been talk in Miami that free agency running back Knowshon Moreno isn’t looking good in practice, and so all Moreno did was put the Dolphins on his back and carry 24 times for 134 yards and a touchdown to lead the way. Maybe the Patriots will end this season where they’ve ended every season with Brady as their quarterback, atop the AFC East. But it’s not going to be an easy path.
No matter how many hundreds or thousands of football games we’ve watched, we witness something we’ve never seen before. That’s what Week One really comes down to, for me: It’s worth the wait, because it always delivers. I had never seen anything like Cordarelle Patterson’s stat line for the Vikings (three carries for 102 yards, three catches for 26 yards, two kickoff returns for 48 yards). I had never seen anything like Antonio Brown’s kick to the face of Browns punter Spencer Lanning. I had never seen anything like the complete meltdown of the Cowboys’ offense in the first half against the 49ers.
You’d think that after all these years, maybe we’d know what to expect from an opening Sunday of an NFL season. But we never do. Except that we know we’ll be entertained.