ClutchPoints
It’s time to overreact to Week 1 of the NFL season, and a select few fanbases should be planning parades after their teams’ great performances in their season openers.
There were also plenty of losers in Week 1, including poor showings by the Miami Dolphins and Houston Texans and another collapse in the fourth quarter from the Baltimore Ravens.
However, there were plenty of winners in the opening week as well, including two teams responsible for some of those losers as well as a Friday night quarterback performance that set the tone for the season. Here are the five biggest winners from Week 1.
The NFC felt wide open after the Philadelphia Eagles coming into the preseason, but the Green Bay Packers cemented themselves as the preseason No. 2 when they traded for Micah Parsons in a massive deal with the Dallas Cowboys.
The Packers had a chance to show off exactly why they should be taken seriously in Week 1 against the Detroit Lions, who finished with the best record in the NFC in the regular season in 2024. They did exactly that, running Detroit out of Lambeau Field in a 27-13 rout that was even more of a blowout than the final score suggests.
Offensively, the Packers looked like the same balanced machine that they were last season. Matt LaFleur came in with a masterful gameplan, and new Lions defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard was overwhelmed by the creativity and experience that LaFleur brought to the game.
10 different Packers caught a pass, and nobody in green caught more than two balls. Green Bay also pounded the rock, controlled the clock with Josh Jacobs and didn’t turn the football over to give the Lions any momentum.
On defense, the Packers were absolutely flying around against a Lions offense that was struggling to find its footing without Ben Johnson. Jared Goff was pressured 16 times on 43 dropbacks, a middle-of-the-pack rate in Week 1, but he never got comfortable on Sunday. Parsons was especially impactful despite playing limited reps in his Packers debut, notching two pressures and a sack.
Every now and then in sports, we get to watch a great player morph into an unstoppable superhero that puts their foot down and decides that they are not losing that day. Josh Allen did just that on Sunday night with the whole country watching and got the Bills to 1-0 on the season.
Make no mistake, Allen was still playing an excellent game even while trailing by 15 points with less than five minutes to go. His throw to set up a Matt Prater field goal at the end of the first half is a play that only a handful of players can make, and he still orchestrated a very productive day against a Ravens defense that should end up being very good, no matter how Sunday night looked.
In the final five minutes, however, [Allen...
