/
/
Week 1 of NFL action brought us some bizzare results. Should we be worried about the GB Packers, LA Chargers, and Dallas Cowboys?
Sep 13, 2026; Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; Minnesota Vikings defensive line Levi Drake Rodriguez (50) tackles Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love (10) as he makes a pass during the second half at U.S. Bank Stadium.
Mandatory Credit: Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images
The NFL season is officially underway, and the Green Bay Packers, Los Angeles Chargers, and Dallas Cowboys all took big losses on Week 1 Sunday.
All three teams entered the 2026 season with playoff expectations at minimum, and all three delivered results that had fans and analysts questioning everything. The question now: how much should we buy into what we saw, and how much of it was classic Week 1 noise?
Week 1 lies to us all the time. Both Super Bowl teams lost in Week 1 last season, and the Raiders were one of the victors in those games. That context matters as we sort through the wreckage of an opening Sunday that left more questions than answers across the league.
Green Bay Packers collapse against Vikings
The Packers blew a 22-10 lead and lost 39-22 to the Minnesota Vikings in one of the most bizarre collapses of the weekend. The final score looks like a blowout, but this game was competitive deep into the second half before Green Bay completely fell apart.
The numbers tell the story of how fast things unraveled.
The Packers’ last four possessions: turnover on downs, fumble, interception, turnover on downs. The Vikings’ last four possessions: touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, touchdown. The drive lengths for those four Minnesota touchdowns were 28 yards, 83 yards, 1 yard, and 14 yards.
That is not purely a defensive problem. That is an offense and special teams feeding the opposition short fields through turnovers and explosive kick returns.
Green Bay has now lost six straight games, the first time the franchise has done that in the lifetime of anyone 33 years old or younger. It is also the third blown double-digit second-half lead in the last three NFC North divisional games.
Without Micah Parsons, the defense has been leaking points at an alarming rate: 22 to the Bears, 41 to the Ravens, 16 to the Vikings, 31 to the Bears, and now 39 to the Vikings again.
I do not buy that this is who the Packers truly are, though. The turnovers and miscues that created those short fields are volatile, unpredictable, and not sustainable in either direction.
Head coach Matt LaFleur is not a first-year head coach. There is a floor this team will reach where the disastrous implosion we saw in Week 1 does not repeat itself. Jordan Love finished the game with a sub-50% completion percentage but 387 yards, an absolutely bizarre stat line that speaks to the fluky nature of the whole afternoon.
The defense without Parsons is a real concern, and I am buying that as a legitimate issue until he returns.
The offense? I think it will be considerably better than what we saw.
My A to Z Sports colleague Easton Freeze, was not as comfortable. He cited that the offensive line had four of five starters with a time-to-pressure average of 2.5 seconds or under, which is entirely dysfunctional. While that should improve, just how much?.
The running game is a mess without Josh Jacobs, with Marshawn Lloyd averaging 2.8 yards per carry, and we do not know when Jacobs is coming back. If this team cannot run the ball to protect leads, that is a major problem regardless of what the passing game produces.
Still, this was a double whammy of Week 1 weirdness and divisional game weirdness. When those two forces collide, I struggle to take the result at face value, but we will see whether I am correct.
LA Chargers stumble against Arizona
The Chargers lost to the Arizona Cardinals at home, and over 30% of a major Las Vegas survivor pool was eliminated because they picked Los Angeles to win this game. That tells you everything about expectations versus reality for this franchise.
Every offseason, the hype cycle for the Chargers restarts. Justin Herbert is an MVP candidate. Jim Harbaugh brings toughness. Mike McDaniel’s offense will unlock the passing game. The offensive line is revamped. And every year, the Chargers end up being the team that falls short of those lofty expectations.
I think this team is more talented than the Cardinals, obviously, and they would probably win eight out of ten games against Arizona. But the pattern of underperformance is hard to ignore. This franchise feels like the perennial playoff first-round loser, and at some point the preseason hype has to translate into actual results.
The counterargument from Freeze is compelling, though. The offensive line allowed no sacks from the actual linemen. Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt combined for zero sacks and two pressures. If Cole Strange is the weak link but not allowing sacks, that is a functional unit.
The bigger concern is what happened when Ladd McConkey left the game: 8.9 yards per pass with McConkey on the field dropped to 3.9 without him, and EPA per play swung from a positive 0.12 to a negative 0.61. That is an entirely different offense without its best pass catcher.
The Chargers also averaged 12.4 yards to go on third down, which tied the worst mark of any game in the 2025 season. You cannot operate an offense going backwards on first and second down.
As Austin Stanley pointed out, the schedule is brutal. Raiders, Bills, Seahawks, Broncos, Chiefs, Rams, Texans, Ravens, Jets, Patriots, Bucs, Raiders again, 49ers, Dolphins, Chiefs, Broncos. In a division with a healthy Patrick Mahomes and a Denver Broncos team that was a quarterback injury away from a Super Bowl appearance last season, dropping a game against Arizona is self-inflicted damage that matters.
The Chargers are on the playoff watch list. If young pass catchers like Tre Harris, Quentin Johnston, and Oronde Gadsden do not step up, this could get ugly fast.
Dallas Cowboys defense raises alarms
The Giants stunned the Cowboys 28-20 on Sunday Night Football, with Jaxson Dart throwing three touchdowns and the New York defense stifling Dallas when it mattered.
Based on EPA per drive, the Cowboys had the worst defensive performance of any team in Week 1, ranking 571st out of 574 games since the start of last season. That was worse than the Panthers allowing 59 points to the Bears on the same day.
The Cowboys surrendered seven possessions worth of damage: four touchdowns, one punt, one fumble, and one drive ended by the clock. Dart went 23-of-29 in the cleanest game of his career. The Giants executed a 29-second two-minute drill right before the half that exemplified how little resistance the Dallas defense offered.
Freeze and I are not worried about the Cowboys offense. Dak Prescott will be better because he has been when healthy. The offensive line is too talented not to improve. The wide receivers are too good to play that poorly again. This unit returns all 11 starters and scored a ton of points throughout last season.
The defense is a different story.
The all-offseason hope was that Christian Parker could get this group to league average, and what we saw suggests that timeline is optimistic. I do not think they are talented enough on the edge or in the secondary right now. Caleb Downs played a strong game, but he is one player on the back end. There are too many holes defensively, and that is going to force this team into shootouts on a weekly basis.
The Christian Parker hire may pay off in 2027 or 2028 once the talent level catches up to the scheme. This season, though, when the offense does not play well, Dallas is going to lose football games because the defense cannot carry its share of the load. Week 1 solidified that concern rather than creating a new one.
The real Week 1 liar from that game might be the Giants.
Dart’s performance, the offensive efficiency, and the overall execution feel like a high-water mark for a team still sorting out an identity among Matt Nagy, Brian Callahan, and Greg Roman. As teams figure out what the Giants are doing schematically, that early-season success could fade quickly.
Green Bay Packers News
Tucker Kraft’s contract extension quietly says something much bigger about the Packers’ future
The tight end’s new deal reveals the Packers’ championship window stretches well beyond 2026, and it’s staying as a consistent competitor.