SI:AM | Five Quick Thoughts on Week 1

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I woke up feeling a little sore this morning, which is either because I’m recovering from my first Sunday of the year watching 10 hours of football, or because I spent the morning cleaning up water in my basement after a flash flood.

In today’s SI:AM:
🗽 Giants win Harbaugh’s debut
🔥 Bears light up the scoreboard
🦬 Josh Allen comes up big for Bills

The first Sunday is in the books

Week 1 in the NFL was a good one. We had shootouts, upsets and an overtime thriller. Here are five things that stood out to me.

A new identity for the Bears

The Bears’ offense is already in midseason form.

They raced past the Panthers yesterday, 59–37, which makes them just the sixth team in NFL history to score at least 55 points in Week 1. Most of their damage came on the ground, too: Chicago was just the second team since 1962 to rush for at least 290 yards and six touchdowns.

The Bears are usually a defense-first team, but that’s changed under coach Ben Johnson. They ranked ninth in the NFL in scoring last season, which was just the fourth time in the last 30 years that they’ve cracked the top 10. This year, Johnson is setting his sights even higher.

“I want to have the highest-scoring offense ever,” he told The Athletic last month.

They’re well on their way.

Vikings’ defense can overcome their QB mess

Minnesota’s already murky quarterback picture got even murkier when Kyler Murray left yesterday’s game in the first quarter with a concussion. Carson Wentz played just fine in relief (133 yards on 12-for-19 passing with three touchdowns), but the real story was how the Vikings’ defense clamped down late in the game and allowed the offense to mount a comeback.

Minnesota scored 22 unanswered points in the fourth quarter as the Packers’ final four possessions went like this: turnover on downs, fumble, interception, turnover on downs.

Brian Flores’s defense took a big step forward last season, ranking third in yards allowed and seventh in scoring, but the offensive ineptitude was just too much for the team to overcome. The offense doesn’t need to light the world on fire, but any improvement, particularly in their league-worst turnover rate, should let the Vikings lean on their defense and grind out enough wins to make the playoffs.

Deshaun Watson isn’t proving anybody wrong

The Browns’ bizarre insistence on starting Deshaun Watson at quarterback doesn’t seem any smarter after Week 1.

Watson completed 16 of 22 passes for 205 yards in a 34–10 loss to the Jaguars yesterday. He was sacked five times, committed two delay of game penalties and threw a laughable interception on the fifth snap of the game. The final stats might somehow even undersell how ugly it was, though. Cleveland gained 80 total yards in the first three quarters as Jacksonville built up a 34–3 lead. Watson and the offense didn’t get anything going until long after the game had been decided.

How many more performances like that will Browns fans be forced to sit through before the team finally admits Watson’s contract is a sunk cost?

Geno Smith might be enough to make the Jets respectable

Last year wasn’t pretty for Geno Smith, who went 2–13 as a starter with the Raiders, but there’s one reason to believe that this year will be more like his back-to-back Pro Bowl seasons in Seattle rather than his ill-fated one-year stint in Las Vegas.

After being sacked 55 times last season (tied for the most in the league), Smith wasn’t brought down once in the Jets’ 23–10 win over the Titans yesterday.

“I don’t think I got touched at all out there and that’s always a great sign,” Smith said. “I thought we ran the ball well, which slowed [Tennessee] down. And then when we needed to pass the ball, I thought the protection was outstanding.”

I don’t want to overreact too much to one win over the hapless Titans, but I think the Jets are going to be, at the very least, not a total embarrassment. Smith isn’t going to make them an instant playoff contender, but he’s the sort of veteran presence who can help prevent things from going sideways the way they have in recent years.

The Giants are also not a joke

The other New York team won later in the day, too. It’s the first time since 2009 that both the Jets and Giants won their season openers.

I can’t remember the last time I watched the Giants play as efficiently as they did in last night’s 28–20 win over the Cowboys. They went 9-for-11 on third-down conversions and were a perfect 4-for-4 on red zone opportunities.

Most incredibly, the Giants moved the ball with ease. Three of their four touchdown drives lasted at least 10 plays. It was the first time since 2015 that they had at least three 10-play touchdown drives in the same game, and the first time since 2008 that they did so in a win.

The best of Sports Illustrated

C.J. Stroud on the field — C.J. Stroud played well, but the Texans fell to the Bills. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Albert Breer: Jesse Minter’s Team Looked Like the Ravens
Conor Orr: Giants’ Week 1 Win Should Be a Lesson to Teams That Are Growing Stagnant
Gliberto Manzano: Week 1 Lessons: Bears Might Be Better Than Last Year
Conor Orr: C.J. Stroud’s Familiar Result Spoils the Best Parts of His Game Against the Bills
Matt Verderame: The Good, Bad and Ugly in NFL Week 1: Josh Allen Delivers for Joe Brady
Jon Wertheim: Alexander Zverev Spoils Ben Shelton’s Hopes of Making History With U.S. Open Win
Pat Forde: Forde-Yard Dash: Three Major Problems That Could Derail These Power Teams
Bryan Fischer: A Week After the Bail Mary, Two Michigan College Football Teams Turned the Page
Tom Verducci: Gerrit Cole’s ABS Excuse Falls Flat

The top five…

Omarion Hampton scores a touchdown. — Omarion Hampton could not be stopped on his way to the end zone. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

… plays from the first Sunday of the NFL season:
5. Omarion Hampton’s touchdown run where he simply refused to go down.
4. Two great plays by Bryce Young. First, he showed some shiftiness in the pocket to buy time before a touchdown pass. Then, he threw a perfect deep ball for a long touchdown pass to Jalen Coker. (Coker ran a great route, too.
3. Tyler Owens’s incredible effort on a special teams tackle.
2. Josh Allen’s game-winning touchdown pass to Joshua Palmer. He ripped it into a tight window and hit Palmer in stride.
1. Lamar Jackson’s miraculous escape from a sack.

📺 What we’re watching today …

NFL

Chiefs vs. Broncos – 8:15 ET ABC, ESPN

Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes returns to the lineup, nine months after suffering a major knee injury.

Premier League

Leeds United vs. Newcastle United, 3 p.m. ET, USA Network

For the third time this season, Newcastle could be involved in a 2–2 draw, with their counterattacking threat capable of hurting a Leeds team that has created plenty of chances.

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