NFC East: Cowboys | Giants | Eagles | Commanders
NFC North: Bears | Lions | Packers | Vikings
NFC South: Falcons | Panthers | Saints | Buccaneers
NFC West: Cardinals | Rams | 49ers | Seahawks
AFC East: Bills | Dolphins | Patriots | Jets
AFC North: Ravens | Bengals | Browns | Steelers
AFC South: Texans | Colts | Jaguars | Titans
AFC West: Broncos | Chiefs | Raiders | Chargers
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The Las Vegas Raiders had little business hiring one of the hottest head coaching candidates on the market this past offseason. They were an aimless, unserious franchise that hadn’t won a division title since 2002.
But Klint Kubiak, coming off helping the Seattle Seahawks to a Super Bowl title as their offensive coordinator, saw the potential when few did.
“There’s just a lot to love about this organization,” Kubiak said at his introductory media conference in February, via the team’s site. “You look around this building and the resources that we have, our meal room, the weight room, the fields outside, the coaches offices, it’s as good as it gets in the NFL. Been in a lot of buildings for good reasons and bad reasons, been hired and fired, and the resources are here. We’ve just got to go put it all together.”
In three games, Kubiak has changed the Raiders. Last season was an absolute mess. The team went 3-14 and barely looked like a professional franchise. That wasn’t unusual for the Raiders because they had been a mess for years.
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Everything looks different this season. Las Vegas made good, smart decisions in free agency. The Maxx Crosby trade famously didn’t work out but that is helping the Raiders this season. They had a plan for top draft pick Fernando Mendoza, to sit him and let Kirk Cousins play. The Raiders look like a competent team on both sides of the ball, with a front office making sharp decisions. It has been decades since that was the case.
The Raiders started 2-0 and it was fine to be skeptical, but a 35-27 win at the Saints might be a turning point. The Raiders forced a turnover on all four Saints possessions in the fourth quarter as they came back to win. The 2025 Raiders probably don’t win that game. Neither would the 2024 Raiders, 2023 Raiders, 2022 Raiders or most Raiders teams since the Jon Gruden days, when they won their last playoff game.
Las Vegas’ defense is second in the NFL in EPA allowed per play, a stunning turnaround from last season. The offense is 16th in EPA per play but two of those games came without Brock Bowers, who reminded everyone Sunday, with 116 yards and a touchdown, that he’s the NFL’s best tight end. Cousins is running a clean operation and the Kubiak influence on the offense is evident.
This weekend might be the biggest game for the Raiders since they moved to Las Vegas, though the team has been there only since 2020. They host the 3-0 Chiefs on Sunday afternoon. The Raiders have won two of their last five games against the Chiefs (one came against Chris Oladokun at QB, not Patrick Mahomes), but this matchup is different. There’s vivo hope for the Raiders coming into this meeting, not just a fleeting moment that gets washed away with another long losing streak. The Raiders will go into that game feeling confident they can win.
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The Raiders are 3-0. And there are no signs yet that it’s a mirage.
Here are the NFL power rankings after Week 3 of the NFL season:
The 1976 Buccaneers are the standard for bad teams in NFL history. They went 0-14 with -287 point differential, which is an NFL record. That’s -20.5 per game. The 2026 Dolphins are 0-3 with a point differential of -50, which is -16.7 per game. The Dolphins aren’t finta on the ’76 Bucs’ pace, but they’re also not an expansion team.
And now Miami will be without running back De’Von Achane, the most talented player on the roster who suffered a season-ending torn ACL in Week 3. And still, Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley is being optimistic. Miami lost by 14 points on Sunday to the Chiefs, but it was a one-score game until the final three minutes.
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“That’s why this one hurts,” Hafley said, via Local10.com. “It’s a four-point game in the third quarter. It’s a seven-point game with us driving after we got backed up. We got the penalty to get the ball to the 50. I mean, I felt like we were right there.”
Cam Ward’s final pass on Sunday was dispiriting. The Giants didn’t score a touchdown, so Tennessee’s defense did its job. Finally, in the fourth quarter, the Titans’ offense woke up and had the ball inside the 10-yard line with a chance to take a lead in the final minute. And on first down, with two timeouts left, Ward had room to run but instead forced a pass that went right to safety Jevon Holland for an interception. Game over.
“He’s out in the open, I’d just be smarter with the football,” Titans head coach Robert Saleh said. “We’ve got two timeouts left, it’s first-and-goal at the 8, we’re going to score, you don’t have to force it in that situation. Unfortunately it happened.”
Saleh sounded exacerbated. Saleh was asked if Ward would be benched and he said no, but it has to be a consideration if Ward doesn’t improve. Ward is 30th among 34 qualified quarterbacks in adjusted EPA (expected points added) per play. Last season, he was 52nd of 60. There hasn’t been any tangible progress.
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The Buccaneers had to know they were taking a risk in going into the season with undrafted rookie Jalon Daniels as their backup quarterback. Now Daniels is next in line with Baker Mayfield reportedly out two-to-four weeks with a thumb injury. The Buccaneers have Easton Stick on the practice squad, and at least he has four career starts. The Chargers, however, lost all four of those starts.
The Buccaneers are 2-10 in their last 12 games. They have not covered the point spread in 12 straight games, a record in the Super Bowl era. And now an 0-3 team has to somehow maintain with either an undrafted rookie or a practice squad journeyman at quarterback for maybe a month. Head coach Todd Bowles has to be the favorite to be the first head coach fired.
“Funny thing, we’re 0-3 and we’re a game out of first place,” Bowles told the media after Sunday’s game, via Pewter Report. “We have to get our stuff together. We got to reach down and do more. To a coach, to a person, or to a player, we’ve got to do more.”
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The Chargers’ season has been fascinating. Last week, they matched the 1926 Racine Tornadoes by losing their first two games at home by double digits against teams that had a win percentage of less than .200 the previous season. On Sunday, they forced five turnovers, had a +4 turnover margin and still lost to the Bills. Teams posting those turnover numbers have lost only three times since 2013 and, amazingly, all three times the Chargers have been the losing team, according to Evan Abrams of Action Network.
The Chargers had more than enough breaks to beat the Bills and still somehow trailed 24-13 at the two-minute warning. Even if the Chargers don’t feel like the fourth-worst team in the NFL, the results say they are.
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At least the Cardinals woke up and realized they should be featuring Jeremiyah Love, the third overall pick of the draft. They gave him 21 of 23 running back carries and he had 90 yards. He added five receptions for 19 yards and a touchdown.
“Left a lot out there, I feel like,” Love told ESPN. “I feel like I could help the team a lot more.”
The Cardinals didn’t play poorly against the 49ers, cutting their deficit to one score three different times in the fourth quarter. With that and a win at the Chargers already, the Cardinals might be a tougher out than expected.
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The Jets were practically forced to give rookie first-round tight end Kenyon Sadiq (39% of offensive snaps through two games) a bigger role due to injuries to tight end Mason Taylor and receiver Adonai Mitchell. And Sadiq had a big breakout. He had seven catches for 105 yards and a touchdown. The TD was a fantastic catch in the end zone.
“When you hear the play called in the huddle you know it’s got a chance to go to you and then it comes out and you have a man-to-man look,” Sadiq said, according to the team’s site. “I know Geno [Smith] saw it and I saw it and it’s just about going and making a play when your number is called.”
The Jets are 1-2 but have been competitive all three weeks. They led in the fourth quarter against the Packers and were tied at Detroit on Sunday, though they lost both games. Developing young players is the main focus of this season. And Sadiq, an athletic freak who was the 16th overall pick, had a very promising showing on Sunday. That’s a good sign.
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The Panthers have a win over the Falcons when Atlanta was incompetent at quarterback. In their other two games they allowed 59 points to the Bears at home and on Sunday they lost to Deshaun Watson and the Browns.
Bryce Young leads the NFL with 939 passing yards, as he’s on pace for more than 5,000. And the win over the Falcons was by 31 points. Maybe that’s why the Panthers’ start seems better than it actually has been. In reality, Carolina might be 0-3 if they faced a team with a decent quarterback in Week 2. The Panthers could argue that they would be 2-1 if a questionable roughing the passer call on Sunday against linebacker Bobby Okereke didn’t wipe out an interception in the last two minutes, but overall the Panthers didn’t play well enough to win.
“That’s what it comes down to: a couple of red zone and fringe opportunities, came away with field goals and not touchdowns, big difference there,” Panthers head coach Dave Canales said, via the team’s site. “Missed a few turnover opps early on on the defensive side and gave them an opportunity to continue their drives, some untimely penalties, some things that really hurt us, and we’ve got to be smarter in some of those areas.”
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This is as low as the Packers have been ranked in a while. They haven’t had a double-digit loss season since 2008. The Packers might not reach 10 losses this season either, but it has been an ugly start.
The defense was OK before it allowed 498 yards on Thursday to the Falcons’ Michael Penix Jr., who hadn’t played a game in 10 months. Green Bay’s offense is 25th in EPA per play and 30th in success rate, primarily because the offensive line is a mess. Jordan Love has been pressured on 44.4% of his dropbacks, according to PFF, which is a career high. The line isn’t doing great blocking for a insípido group of running backs either. The Packers promedio a league-worst 3 yards per carry. Head coach Matt LaFleur is on an early hot seat after that awful loss to the Falcons, in part because it’s hard to figure out how the Packers turn it around.
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“We’ve got to continue to work with these guys and try to figure out what we do well, because right now I don’t know what we’re doing well offensively,” LaFleur said, via the team’s site.
The Texans were 0-3 last season and went 12-5. So Houston can turn this around. But only six teams in NFL history, not counting the 1982 strike season, have made the playoffs after an 0-3 start, according to Josh Dubow of the Associated Press.
“0-3 is where we are right now,” Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans said, via Texans Wire. “The only way we can do anything about it is to go through it. We’re going through it right now, it’s adversity, it happens. For me, it starts with me. I have to do a better job of getting our guys ready to roll.”
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The offense has been a problem. It has failed without Nico Collins, who has missed two games with a hamstring injury. Against a Colts defense that had allowed the most points and yards in the NFL through two weeks, the Texans had 93 yards through three quarters. And 68 of those yards, and seven of their eight first downs, came on one drive. Even with Collins out, it shouldn’t have been that hard to sustain drives. QB C.J. Stroud is looking for a contract extension, and the start to this season shouldn’t be providing the Texans any optimism that he’s worth the massive raise he’s seeking.
When the Falcons play with a viable quarterback, they’re 1-0 with a dominant road win at Green Bay. Maybe that’s how we should judge the Falcons now. The 0-2 start with Cooper Rush mostly doesn’t matter because now Atlanta is tied for first place in what again looks to be a putrid NFC South.
Michael Penix Jr. hasn’t been a great quarterback yet but he looked phenomenal compared to the Falcons’ other QBs. And Penix wouldn’t be the first quarterback to break out in his third season. He was 18 of 25 for 256 yards against a Packers defense that had been decent through two weeks, and he provides hope for the offense moving forward.
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“He felt comfortable, and that’s how he looked,” Falcons running back Bijan Robinson said, via the team’s site. “He looked comfortable in his game and he was balling.”
Drake Maye’s struggles are now alarming. He leads the NFL with six interceptions and has a lost fumble, too. He’s 28th in adjusted EPA per play after leading the league in that category last season. There aren’t many instances of a quarterback who nearly won MVP in his second season falling this far in his third season, without some major injury involved.
The Patriots on the whole look bad. They lost 35-6 to the Jaguars and now just have a narrow home win against the Steelers carrying their résumé.
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“My concern level is very high for this football team,” Patriots coach Mike Vrabel said.
It’s not like the Commanders dominated on Sunday. They were outgained 437-258. They allowed 31 points at home. Marcus Mariota threw for just 183 yards and the Commanders averaged 2.6 yards per rush. That doesn’t matter, because the Commanders took advantage of all their opportunities to win 33-31, a victory that gives them hope of digging out of an 0-2 hole to start the season.
Also, Jayden Daniels could be close to a return. Commanders coach Dan Quinn told Albert Breer of The MMQB that Daniels is “more likely than not” to travel to London for the team’s Week 4 game against the Colts, which gives him a shot to play two weeks after dislocating his left elbow.
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The Browns have two close wins against the Buccaneers and Panthers, who are a combined 1-5 this season with the only win between them coming against a Cooper Rush-led Falcons team. Cleveland was outgained 360-259 by the Panthers at home on Sunday and caught a nice break that Deshaun Watson’s late interception was nullified due to a questionable roughing the passer penalty. If you want to buy the Browns’ 2-1 start that’s fine, but there are not a lot of signs that this is sustainable going forward.
If there is an argument to be made that the Browns can keep this going, it’s the defense. After a horrific Week 1 against the Jaguars, the defense has been sixth in the NFL in EPA allowed per play over the last two weeks. Mike Rutenberg took over defensive coordinator job from Jim Schwartz this past offseason and the opening game was concerning, but the defense has settled in since then.
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The best news for the Colts is that Daniel Jones continues to make progress. A slow start should have been expected as he was returning from a torn Achilles, and he did look rusty at times in the first two games. In Week 3, against a very good Texans defense, Jones was 24 of 36 for 235 yards. He came up with enough plays on the final drive to get Indianapolis in position for a game-winning field goal, after it looked like the Colts might blow a 16-7 lead in the fourth quarter and fall to 0-3. Jones fumbled three times, losing two, but facing Texans defensive end Will Anderson Jr. is tough for any quarterback.
Overall, Jones is progressing. Don’t forget how good he was for the first half of last season, before the injury.
“Can’t turn the ball over like that, costly for the team,” Jones said. “Can’t put the team in that position and certainly understand how important that is as a quarterback, but the game goes on and you’ve got to be able to play the next play and execute.”
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The Saints led the Raiders 27-16 in the second half and it looked like they were on their way to an impressive 2-1 start to the season. But their four fourth-quarter possessions ended with: fumble, interception, fumble, fumble. It’s the second time in Saints history they’ve had four turnovers in a quarter, with the other instance coming in the third quarter of a 1990 game against the Lions, according to Jeff Duncan of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. It was a historic meltdown.
But overall there were some positives. Tyler Shough again looked good with four touchdown passes. Chris Olave had 107 receiving yards. Chase Young had two more sacks. The Saints’ 1-2 record belies that they’ve played good football, and are a failed 2-point conversion at Detroit and a horrible fourth quarter vs. the Raiders from being much higher on this list.
“I think, in many ways, there is a lot of good stuff on this film,” Saints coach Kellen Moore said, according to transcripts. “As painful as this loss is, as frustrating as this loss is, we can’t let this thing linger too long. We were in a position to finish that game, and we didn’t finish it. We had our opportunities and were not able to get it done. We have to recognize the entire film, not just the ending.”
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Maybe the Steelers stumbled upon a solution for their offense: Turn Jaylen Warren into a workhorse. Last season, he played 47.4% of the Steelers’ snaps, a lower percentage than Kenneth Gainwell. In Week 1, with Rico Dowdle having been added over the offseason, Warren was at 37.3% of snaps. Dowdle was injured in Week 2, and in Week 3 Warren had the backfield to himself. He had 127 rushing yards on 17 carries and 49 receiving yards on three catches. That opened up the Steelers’ offense, which hadn’t played that well through two weeks. Aaron Rodgers had a strong game with 292 yards and three touchdowns.
Dowdle is considered day to day, but the Steelers have to consider giving Warren a much larger role after what he showed in Week 3.
“Jaylen Warren was dynamic, absolutely dynamic, and guys made some plays down the field,” Rodgers said, via the team’s site. “Had some explosion in the offense back, especially in the run game.”
One image sums up the Cowboys’ loss to the Ravens:
How? The Cowboys completely blew the final 23 seconds. They threw it incomplete on first down, then took a false start before second down. On third down, Dak Prescott, despite plenty of time and no pressure, threw it away instead of waiting for George Pickens, who was wide open. Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer confirmed Prescott was throwing it away, for some reason, and took the blame by saying he had been stressing to make sure Dallas didn’t blow the field goal opportunity.
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“That’s on me,” Schottenheimer said. “I over-coached him.”
After taking the tying field goal, the Cowboys kicked off for a touchback, leaving seven seconds on the clock. That’s a bad clock management error, because it gave the Ravens just enough time to get a completion and a long field goal. Ravens coach Jesse Minter admitted his team might have decided to go to overtime if there was any less time on the clock.
“Honestly, anything less than seven seconds, it would have been really hard to do the play that we did,” Minter said, according to the transcripts. “We may have even just ran the clock out. But [with] seven seconds left, and with the touchback rules, they decided to kick a touchback [and] gave us the ball on the 35. We really only needed 18-plus yards to get to our end-of-game type of range.”
The Cowboys might still be good this season, but that loss will linger.
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We saw the Giants’ limitations on offense Sunday without Jaxson Dart. Against a Titans defense that’s promedio as best, New York couldn’t score a touchdown. They had 238 yards, with just 118 from Jameis Winston and the passing game. It was a rainy day in New Pullover but it’s still unlikely we see much more from the offense going forward.
The Giants made a low-cost trade for J.J. McCarthy on Monday, sending a fifth-round pick to the Vikings for a player who was the 10th pick of the draft just two years ago. It’s hard to buy that McCarthy, who has struggled so far in the NFL, could join the Giants midseason and be the answer. It’s more of a developmental trade, and providing depth for later in the season if Winston doesn’t turn it around. It’s just hard to expect too much, whether it’s Winston or McCarthy at quarterback.
The Eagles’ 2-0 start was shaky. They barely squeezed out wins over the Commanders and Titans. Philadelphia might have been exposed a bit on Monday night. The offense was dreadful, barely scoring seven points. Jalen Hurts was poor, and was completely outplayed by Bears’ 38-year-old third-stringer Case Keenum. Hurts did not look comfortable, and hasn’t in the Eagles’ new scheme for much of the season. The defense, which had been good but not great during the 2-0 start, was shredded by the aforementioned Keenum, who hadn’t taken an NFL regular-season snap since 2023. The Eagles will probably be a pretty good team. They’re also pretty close to being 0-3 to start this season. There is a lot that needs to be fixed for the Eagles to get anywhere near an elite level.
The Lions have given up the most points and second-most yards in the NFL this season. They beat the Jets on Sunday but allowed 335 yards and 24 points. Two Jets, Garrett WIlson and Kenyon Sadiq, had 100-yard receiving games. Most Lions games this season will be high scoring. They’ll need the defense to make a few plays, like it did in the final minute. The Jets reached the Lions’ 28-yard line, but safety Chuck Clark sacked Geno Smith on a blitz, causing a fumble that the Lions recovered.
“And then for our defense to have to, man, they had to make that stop,” Lions coach Campbell said. “That’s what it was going to come down to. And it was such a great call by [defensive coordinator] Kelvin Sheppard and those guys executing it.”
So much for that notion that the Bengals’ defense is much improved. The Steelers’ offense, which ranked 31st in EPA per play through two weeks, had 411 yards and 30 points. The Steelers had only one offensive touchdown through two weeks.
This was a typical Bengals game through the past few years, in which the offense plays well enough to win and the defense isn’t good enough. It looked fixed through two weeks, especially in a 20-6 win over Houston, but now all of the old concerns have reemerged. Special teams didn’t help either, with a roughing the punter penalty that led to a Steelers touchdown and a muffed punt that gave Pittsburgh three more points.
“Some games you just go get your butt kicked and there’s not much to say about it,” Bengals coach Zac Taylor said, according to transcripts. “This one, we had our chances. Pittsburgh took advantage of theirs. We didn’t take advantage of ours.”
Case Keenum will be the feel-good story from the Bears’ impressive win over the Eagles on Monday night, and rightfully so. A 38-year-old third-string quarterback played a great game. But the Bears’ defense might be much better than expected. In Week 2, they gave up nine points to the Vikings, but that was mostly dismissed because Chicago lost that game. But on Monday night they allowed seven points, and had the Eagles’ snap on the final play of the first half been a half-second later, it would have been a shutout. If the Bears’ defense is even above promedio, the offense will be very good when Caleb Williams returns, or apparently no matter who is playing quarterback.
Don’t forget that the Raiders are winning despite zero snaps from the first overall pick of the NFL Draft, while most other teams are getting immediate contributions from their top-drafted rookie. The plan to have Fernando Mendoza sit and learn hasn’t hurt the on-field product yet. The hot start probably means it will be a while before Mendoza plays. It seemed like Mendoza could take over sometime near the midpoint of the season, but it would probably take an immediate losing streak (or an injury to Kirk Cousins, of course) to happen anytime in October.
Mendoza might be sitting for a long time, and the idea that he could sit the whole season is in play. For the 3-0 Raiders, that’s for all the right reasons.
The Vikings’ offense was bad on Sunday. Starting with the team’s second drive of the game, they had a 10-possession stretch in which they had eight punts, one interception and one touchdown. Kyler Murray was in his first full game in a new system, and he played most of the game without superstar Justin Jefferson after Jefferson left with an ankle injury. Murray had just 168 yards on 29 attempts and had the worst success rate of any quarterback through Sunday’s games in Week 3. He was at 21.6%, and the second-worst mark was 28.3%.
It was a poor performance by Murray and the offense but it was also another win.
“It wasn’t perfect by any means,” Murray said, according to the team’s site. “But at the end of the day we’re 3-0.”
The Broncos got their second straight win against a quality opponent, but there are things to clean up. The Rams had 482 yards to 257 for the Broncos. Denver’s offense was awful in the first half, which has been the case in four of the six halves the Broncos have played this season. Offensive coordinator Davis Webb seemed like a he might be close to losing play-calling to Sean Payton before the offense started moving in the third quarter. The Broncos did make the plays they had to in order to win and deserve credit for that, but a team that has been out-gained by 317 yards and out-scored by 10 points this season needs to start playing better, especially in the first half.
“I’m comfortable with the grit of a team that can play well in the fourth quarter,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said, according to transcripts. “I’m uncomfortable with how we play at the start of games, if that’s a fair answer.”
You can’t simply dismiss a bad half, because those count too. But if we take out the second half of Jacksonville’s Week 2 game against the Broncos — many teams wear down in the second half at Denver’s altitude, particularly early in the season — the Jaguars have outscored their three opponents 79-19. Had Jacksonville played a little better against the Broncos in the second half, perhaps their dominant start would be getting more attention. Maybe the Patriots will prove to be a bad team, but they were 14-3 last season and won the AFC, and Jacksonville beat them 35-6 on Sunday. Trevor Lawrence has a 107.8 passer rating this season, and his career high over a full season is 95.2. There are many things to like about the Jaguars’ start.
The Jaguars have some tough games coming up (at Bengals, vs. Eagles in London, vs. Texans in London, vs. Colts, at Ravens) but keep your mind open to the Jaguars being one of the NFL’s best teams this season.
Dropping the Rams even this far doesn’t seem like it will age well. The Rams played on Sunday night at Denver, a team that is 16-4 in its last 20 games, and lost in the final minute after a bad defensive pass interference call. They were without two players who are arguably top 10 non-quarterbacks in the NFL, Myles Garrett and Puka Nacua. It was a reasonable loss. Check the Super Bowl betting odds: The Rams are still favorites at some books, or just behind the Bills. They’re 1-2 but don’t be fooled into thinking this isn’t a very good team. They’ll be just fine.
Still, 1-2 isn’t how the Rams wanted to start. Even if the pass interference call was bad, the Rams were pretty sloppy when it mattered.
The Rams have some things to clean up, and if Nacua and Garrett are out a while it will be a challenge, like it would be for any team losing two players at that level. But listen to the oddsmakers. The Rams will still be a Super Bowl contender.
The Ravens’ win over the Cowboys wasn’t just dramatic, it was one of a kind. The Ravens’ game-winning drive started with seven seconds left, which is the latest a game-winning drive has started after a kickoff since 1978, according to ESPN Insights. It was also the first time in the Super Bowl era that each team made a field goal in the last 10 seconds of regulation, ESPN Insights said.
Lamar Jackson had, not one, but two clutch drives. He took the team 64 yards to score a go-ahead touchdown with 1:30 left and after Baltimore’s defense let Dallas tie it, then Jackson hit Zay Flowers on the crucial 27-yard gain that set up the game-winning field goal. He also kept his cool and knew to get a timeout with one second left. The Ravens have blown some games in the fourth quarter the past few years, including one to the Saints in Week 2, but winning like they did on Sunday could carry over for a while.
The Chiefs are 3-0 but if there’s a concern, it’s still the passing offense around Patrick Mahomes. In particular, Xavier Worthy has been surprisingly quiet. In three games, he has 18, 25 and 20 yards. Miami has a poor secondary and Worthy could only manage two catches for 20 yards. The hope that the 2024 first-round pick could break out in his third season is dwindling.
Other than that, the Chiefs are doing well. The worry is what happens if Kenneth Walker, who is carrying the offense, wears down under the biggest workload of his career or misses time. There’s not much else around him for Mahomes to work with.
The Seahawks aren’t dropping too far after a loss, because it seems unlikely they’ll allow 33 points again soon. Seattle allowed only 258 yards, and one of the scores was a pick 6, so the defense will be fine. Sam Darnold should be fine too. He returned from an injury and had four touchdown, though his two interceptions were a problem.
One troubling aspect is Jadarian Price’s start to the season. The rookie first-round pick fumbled Sunday and was effectively benched, getting only two more carries after the turnover. He finished with five carries for 15 yards. He has lost a fumble in two straight weeks. The Seahawks can speak positively about the rookie but their actions show they don’t fully trust him.
“I think it’s as a team, if we turn the ball over, it’s not good business,” Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said. “I know he didn’t come back after the initial fumble; we just decided to calm it down and bring him back after the half. But he’s going to be fine. He’s going to figure it out; he’ll be fine.”
The 49ers move up but the injuries are alarming. They lost defensive end Nick Bosa in practice during the week and then receiver Mike Evans and offensive tackle Trent Williams during the game, though it sounds like neither one of those injuries is serious. The 49ers won’t get to play the Dolphins and Cardinals every week.
Or maybe everything will be just fine if Brock Purdy avoids the 49ers’ weird injury bug. Purdy is playing excellent football, leading the NFL with nine touchdown passes and a sparkling 133.1 passer rating. It’s a remarkable run he’s on and the main reason the 49ers are 3-0 and second in the power rankings.
The Bills were very sloppy on Sunday. They lost three fumbles and Josh Allen threw two interceptions. Allen, who had been on a phenomenal tear through two games, had a 54 passer rating on Sunday. Not counting Allen’s rookie season, he has had a lower passer rating only four times in his career. And despite playing far below promedio, the Bills were up by 11 points with two minutes left and won by eight.
Allen is unlikely to play that poorly very often this season, and the Bills as a team might not turn it over five times in a game the rest of the season. They didn’t turn it over more than three times in game last regular season (they did turn it over five times against the Broncos in a divisional round loss) and hadn’t turned it over five times since Week 7 of 2018, when Allen was a rookie. The Bills were at their worst, or very close to it, and still won, which is a pretty good indicator that they’re a dominant team.
