NFL Week 1 Recap: Bears Set a Scoring Record, Chiefs Find Their Running Back

Kenneth Walker III at Seattle’s Super Bowl LX victory parade in February. Six months later he was doing the same thing to a different opponent in a different jersey. Photo: Washington National Guard (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons

Every September the NFL makes a promise it has no intention of keeping: that Week 1 tells you something real. By Wednesday, half the league already looks like a mirage, and the other half is out here acting like destiny wrote itself in permanent marker. Sunday and Monday gave us both versions of that lie, sometimes in the same building.

Start with the number that’s going to anchor every parity conversation for the next month: 96. That’s the combined score when the Bears beat the Panthers 59-37, the highest-scoring game in the history of NFL Week 1, blowing past a record that had stood since 2018. Caleb Williams became the first player in Bears history to throw for 200-plus yards and two touchdowns while also rushing for 50-plus yards and two more scores in the same game. Chicago also allowed 37 points and still won by three touchdowns, which is either a fun quirk of a shootout or a real problem waiting for December (ask me again once they play a defense that isn’t busy handing them a short field all afternoon). Bryce Young threw for 361 yards, the second most of his career, and it barely registered as a footnote.

That’s what this week did. It made 361 passing yards feel like an afterthought.

The best new toy in the league debuted fifteen hundred miles away from Chicago, and Andy Reid basically just handed him the keys. Kenneth Walker III, six months removed from parading around Seattle as Super Bowl LX MVP, signed with Kansas City this spring for three years and $45 million, a move some Chiefs fans grumbled about at the time. On Monday night he ran for 173 yards on 23 carries, broke a 60-yard touchdown on fourth-and-1 that hit a top speed of 21.21 miles per hour on the way to the end zone (the longest run by a Chiefs back since 2019), and caught a second score for good measure. Patrick Mahomes, back from a torn ACL and looking every bit as rusty as you’d expect against actual NFL competition, completed just two of his first twelve passes. It did not matter. The Chiefs beat Denver 31-10, and for the first time in a while, Kansas City has a running game that can bail Mahomes out on the nights his legs and his arm haven’t caught up to his head yet.

Seattle opened its title defense the way it spent most of last season winning games: with a defense covering for a shaky offensive day. Sam Darnold left with an injury and New England still only managed 10 points against a Seahawks unit that looks like it’s picking up right where it left off in February. Final score, 13-10. Not artistic. Plenty functional.

San Francisco’s trip to Australia told a similarly one-sided story, minus the drama. Brock Purdy was terrific in a 27-7 win over the Rams, and the 49ers did it while working around the injuries that have already piled up. The Rams offense, by contrast, never found a rhythm and rarely made Purdy uncomfortable, and Christian McCaffrey saw fewer touches than the workload everyone’s used to. If the Niners can keep surviving the training room the way they did in Melbourne, the rest of the NFC West should be nervous.

Detroit needed overtime and a missed two-point conversion to beat New Orleans 31-30, in a game that had no business being that close. The Lions built a 21-0 lead by the third quarter, watched most of it evaporate as Tyler Shough got hot and finished 35 of 56 for 410 yards, and needed a Jahmyr Gibbs touchdown in overtime just to force the Saints into a win-or-lose two-point try. New Orleans went for it instead of kicking, which is the right call given the math, and it simply didn’t work. Give Kellen Moore’s team credit anyway. A team that trails 21-0 in the third quarter of a road opener does not usually make you sweat that much in the fourth.

Cincinnati beat Tampa Bay 33-27 in a game that should not have been nearly that close. The Bengals forced four turnovers, including a scoop-and-score off a Baker Mayfield fumble, and still needed the entire fourth quarter to put it away. If a defense that just spent an offseason importing Dexter Lawrence and half a new secondary can’t turn four takeaways into more separation than that, there’s a version of this season where the offense has to bail Cincinnati out on the nights the turnovers don’t come. They came on Sunday. Keep an eye on what happens the week they don’t.

Baltimore’s new defensive coordinator, Jesse Minter, made his Ravens debut look easy, up 31-7 by halftime in a 41-23 win over Indianapolis. Zay Flowers had a career-high 150 yards before a hamstring injury knocked him out before the break, Derrick Henry looked every bit as ageless as he did a year ago, and Lamar Jackson’s legs looked like they belong to a healthy man again. Minter is now 7-0 in Week 1 as a defensive playcaller across two franchises. That either means something about him, or it means the Colts secondary needs a change of address. Probably both.

Jacksonville picked up exactly where it left off last December, and Cleveland’s Deshaun Watson experiment picked up exactly where it left off too, just somehow worse. Trevor Lawrence carved up the Browns 34-10 like he was running a two-minute drill for four quarters, and Watson threw an interception on his third pass of the season before settling into a rhythm of mostly missing guys who were open. The Jaguars have now won nine straight games dating back to last year. The Browns have their quarterback situation exactly as unresolved as it’s been since spring, except now they have box score evidence.

Pittsburgh beat Atlanta 20-13 on the strength of its defense, which is a sentence Steelers fans have been waiting years to type again. T.J. Watt picked off Cooper Rush and returned it 33 yards for the game’s decisive score, and the Steelers held the Falcons to two of twelve on third down. Bijan Robinson still put up 173 yards from scrimmage on his own, because Bijan Robinson does that regardless of who’s throwing him the ball. Until Atlanta sorts out its quarterback room, though, that’s about all the Falcons’ offense is going to be: one great player trying to save the day alone.

The Jets looked competent on both sides of the ball for the first time in what feels like a decade, beating Tennessee 23-10 behind a defense that allowed 112 yards through three quarters. That’s a genuinely encouraging sign for Aaron Glenn’s team. The bigger question is whether it holds up once the schedule stops being the Titans, who looked like the same 3-14 team from a year ago in new uniforms. New York’s offense moved the ball with ease. Whether it can do that against a defense that isn’t actively trying to lose is the thing worth revisiting in October.

The best game of the early window, by a wide margin, was Buffalo’s 36-31 win at Houston. Josh Allen threw for 334 yards, ran for two more scores, and drove the Bills 96 yards in 97 seconds to win it after C.J. Stroud fumbled away the ball at the goal line with under two minutes left. It was vintage Allen, the kind of performance that reminds you why he’s the reigning MVP. Stroud was excellent too, 26 of 38 for 274 yards, and Houston’s defense, which allowed the most points it’s given up since 2023, is still good enough that this loss shouldn’t cause anyone real panic. Just a rough day against a quarterback who specializes in ruining rough days for everybody else.

If you’re looking for the worst loss by a good team this week, it’s a two-way race between the Rams and what happened to the Chargers in Arizona, and I’d argue the Cardinals’ 26-14 win was the more thorough beating despite the twelve-point final margin. Arizona snapped a nine-game losing streak, dominated time of possession by 15 minutes, and got a touchdown from rookie Jeremiyah Love in his first career game. Justin Herbert lost his top receiver to injury in the third quarter and the Chargers’ offense basically stopped existing after that. Mike LaFleur’s Cardinals debut could not have gone much better. Jim Harbaugh’s Chargers, meanwhile, have some explaining to do.

Minnesota’s 39-22 win over Green Bay had two stories stitched together, and neither one is good news for the Packers long-term. The first is Kyler Murray’s Vikings debut ending in a concussion on a third-quarter scramble, which is not what anyone wanted for a quarterback who was supposed to be the whole offseason storyline. The second is Green Bay finding a way to blow a game it controlled for three quarters, with Brian Flores sending pressure the Packers’ offensive line simply couldn’t pick up down the stretch. Carson Wentz came off the bench and looked perfectly fine, which is its own small miracle, but the bigger pattern here is Green Bay, again, not being able to close. That’s a habit now, not a coincidence.

Kirk Cousins outplayed an entire Dolphins offense by himself in a 27-13 Raiders win, throwing three touchdowns even while going ice cold on anything downfield. Ashton Jeanty had the best game of his young career, and Las Vegas didn’t punt until the fourth quarter. Miami’s Malik Willis had some nice flashes in his first start for a rebuilding team that clearly isn’t going to be competitive with receivers who can’t get open, but there’s something there worth watching if the Dolphins ever surround him with real talent. Just don’t expect that to happen this year.

Philadelphia survived Washington 24-22 in a game that was a lot closer than most people expected, which says more about the Eagles’ sloppy offensive line play than it does about the Commanders being good. Jalen Hurts threw three passes of 30-plus yards, Dallas Goedert broke off a 43-yard catch-and-run for the difference, and Washington’s two-point try to tie it late got stuffed at the goal line. Jayden Daniels looked human for most of the first half coming off last year’s injury-plagued season, six of 16 passing before he found his legs and picked apart Philly’s defense with quick throws in the fourth quarter. If he can carry that rhythm into Week 2, the version of Daniels people were excited about a year ago is still in there somewhere.

On paper, Dallas’ 28-20 loss to the Giants reads like an eight-point game. Watch the tape and it wasn’t that competitive. New York controlled this one from the opening series, with John Harbaugh’s Giants debut going about as well as it could have. Jaxson Dart threw for 230 yards and three scores, Cam Skattebo backflipped his way to 81 hard yards in his return from injury, and the Cowboys’ offense had fewer than 200 yards deep into the fourth quarter. Dak Prescott finished with two touchdowns and an ugly interception, and Dallas’ receivers dropped enough passes to make you wonder if they were still sleepy from the offseason hype. Everybody in Dallas keeps talking about the Super Bowl. Week 1 suggested they should worry about their own division first.

So no, Week 1 doesn’t tell you much. It told us the Bears can score 59, the Packers can blow a lead in their sleep, and the Cardinals can beat a good team by more than the scoreboard says. What it also told us, if you were watching Arrowhead Stadium at midnight on Monday, is that Kansas City finally has the running back it’s needed since Mahomes started needing one, and Seattle just watched him do it to somebody else. That’s the lie and the truth of Week 1, living in the same building. Everybody looked like the best or worst version of themselves for one Sunday. Ask again in a month.