2026 NFL Week One Political Report

It's far too early, obviously, to speak in terms of an order of teams in each conference.

That, however, said:  We CAN at least go Stock Up and Stock Down, in no particular order.

AFC:

STOCK UP:

Kansas City.  Boy, did that game look familiar.  Seven times in the first three quarters, ESPN showed Mrs. Travis Kelce.  Patrick Mahomes was healthy.  The referees appeared to be in full effect.  And the Broncos had no material chance whatsofreakingever.

Baltimore.  In what many believe might be Lamar's last real shot in Baltimore, they got off to a good start.  But if Mahomes stays healthy, could it also be familiar to see Lamar hit a granite ceiling?

Buffalo.  Another "same ol' song and dance" motif.

STOCK DOWN:

New England.  That looked awfully suspicious in the opener.  The real question is going to be what happens, especially to Drake Maye, going forward.

LA Chargers.  One of the most listless performances of the entire weekend.

Denver.  Got run over by the Patrick Mahomes buzzsaw, and it really makes you wonder what shot they really have to accomplish anything.

NFC:

STOCK UP:

Chicago.  The problem being that people are really believing that defense in Chicago is completely non-existent.  One pundit even joked that the Bears might need to break the scoring record for a team for a season to have any real shot at a successful year.

Detroit.  Got a lot of help to beat New Orleans, and if that plays out more later in the year, the NFC North is open to them.

San Francisco.  Especially with the LA Superteam flaking apart, that win might be FAR LARGER than any will admit.

Seattle's more a "we'll see".

STOCK DOWN:

Dallas.  Especially if you're going to continue to be given the media front-and-center of the league's most-valuable franchise, you gotta do better than that!

Green Bay.  Gee, did that look familiar -- with the shoe on the other foot, Mr. Jacobs???

BTW, Green Bay opened a 6.5 point favorite at the Jets.  It's been bet to -4.5 already, and I'll be surprised if they're giving more than a field goal.

Carolina.  Oh dear God no.  The defensive coordinator should've been fired today for THAT performance.

LA Rams.  You not only get blown out by the 49ers in Australia, you've now lost Garrett for at least a month.

2026 Week One Score Report

Starting with an addendum to the Dud of the Week.

That performance by the Denver Broncos was an embarrassment to the league.  It won't make the stand for the award, but that gets at least a mention.

Not that the game wasn't basically certain for the Chiefs and Mahomes to begin with -- including, according to vlogger Tom Grossi, showing Taylor Swift SEVEN TIMES in the first three quarters.

• Another way you can probably think the game was rigged.  They needed 41 points to tie the record for the most points in a Week 1. (791)
• They got exactly 41 points for the 791 total.  And that was after a 13-10 and 27-7 pair of games to start it.
• Another interesting statistic from Reddit:  For the first time in league history, a 16-game week has ended with every game having a different point differential.
• Home teams were 10-5 this week, including every game late window on forward except the Chargers.
• 3 Cliffhangers this week -- Three instances in two games in which a tying or winning score comes in the last two minutes or overtime (Buffalo, double in Detroit), 
• 6 Last Chance Misses -- in which any play in the last two minutes feasibly can tie or win the game but is missed.  However, that was only in four games.  Washington missed a tying two in the last two minutes, then the onside.
• And then we had a four-bagger in Detroit.  Cliffhanger for the Saints at 1:07, a field goal missed at the gun for the Saints.  An overtime touchdown for Detroit, but with the new rules, New Orleans could get the touchdown back -- but then missed the two-point conversion to win it.  2 Cliffhangers, 2 Last Chance Misses
• 6 games were non-competitive, in which the game never got within eight points in the fourth quarter.
• And 2 more were within 8 at some point in the fourth quarter, but finished outside it, meaning half the schedule ended up comparative blowouts.
• And the final 3 games finished within 8, but, in all three cases, the winning team had the ball for more than the final two minutes.

2026 Week One Score Report, before the Monday Nighter....

Noted on Reddit (and I apparently have been reinstated to X again -- that makes TWICE on account #...  10?  12???)...

Anyhow, it has been noted that the record for Week 1 scoring was set in 2002 at 791 points, which would be an average of 49 and change for the week.

Even after a 13-10 opener and a 27-7 game in Australia, we now stand at 750 points -- a flat 50 per game.

Now, both quarterbacks are coming off major injuries, etc.  But if the Monday nighter can get 41 or more....

After Further Review, Week One, Part Two: The Packer Fan's Lament

Said I'd cover this if I found it, and I did.

Found it on Reddit.

One drive, four different plays.

And only one of them MIGHT have been a 100% good call as it had a part to play in the go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter for Minnesota.

It's 22-17 Green Bay.

Play One:  3rd and 11, 11:03 to go.  First down for illegal contact, #7 Green Bay.  A sack is negated.

He has a five-yard zone, but appears to be committing defensive holding on the play -- not illegal contact.  The contact appears to begin at the five yards.

Play Two:  3rd and 3, 9:15 to go.  First down for roughing the passer, Clay Matthews Rule.

Watch that he's gonna get fined for this.  You can't put weight on the quarterback.  Your only possible mitigation is if you believed #74 Minnesota shoves him into the quarterback.

Play Three, no call.  3rd and 3, 9:09.  Jaire Alexander is mugged by #76 of Minnesota, no call.  Vikings gain 28 on the play.

Play Four:  3rd and 5 at the Green Bay 6.  Defensive holding negates an interception.  That may have been the only 100% call of the four.

Dud of the Week, entering Monday Night of Week 1

Yep, Monday night had a big one.  Not big enough to crack the top three, but to add a mention to it...

DISHONORABLE MENTIONS:

Drake Maye.  Look, you may be early in your third year and all, but you are the defending AFC champions and would otherwise have some political pull ("Patriots Are Champions" and all...).  23/33 isn't bad -- three picks, including a suspiciously-underthrown ball at the end to hand the game to Seattle for the Champs' Opener is another thing.

The Carolina defense, or whatever that was which approximated it.  The good news:  The league got a game in the 90's this week.  (According to Wikipedia, it tied for the 12th highest scoring game in the history of the league at 96 -- 59-37.) The bad news for Carolina is Chicago hung nearly 60 on them.

Pro Football Reference and Stathead.  Who now charge $9 a month for what I used to be able to do for free.  I'd like to try to find the last defense who literally got 60 hung of them, but it's now $9 a month to do so!

That one was unplanned, but the rant stands.

HONORABLE MENTION to Statmuse, who apparently has it.  59 points ties for the 23rd most points in the history of the league by one team.  The last team to get 60 or more was, shockingly, the Las Vegas Raiders, who hung 63 on the LA Chargers on a Thursday night squash December 14, 2023 -- just three months after Miami hung 70 on Denver!

Back to the DISHONORABLE MENTIONS:

The Tennessee Titans.  If this turns out to be a shock year for the Jets, this may be retroactively removed.  But no one has confused the Jets for any degree of a football team in quite a while.  So you lay a non-competitive 23-10 egg at home to the JETS????

Added Monday Night:  The Denver Broncos.  Look, I know there was a lot of help -- including that Mr. Travis Kelce was shown in her skybox with Tom Cruise seven times in the game.  That said, you could've deigned to show up, right???

And now, the medalists:

THE BRONZE MEDAL (again, pending tonight):  The two apparent front-runners in the annual UrinatingTree Tank Bowl for the #1 Draft Pick:  The Cleveland Browns and the Miami Dolphins.

You could've deigned to show up.  Either of you.

And I think the bigger indictment might be on the Browns, because they are money-stuck on DeRapist Rapist, even though it's clear that motherfucker doesn't have any business in the NFL at all -- on the field or off the field considerations.  But yesterday's decision-making may expose that Prime Time's kid has even less!

And, without Tua now, the Dolphins might have no one anyone is going to care about.  So that's two candidates right there for Arch Manning's services if the rigging and pimping of the Manning kid continues at Texas.

THE SILVER MEDAL:  Matt LaFleur in general.

If the games were any bit of legitimate, LaFleur would be fired this morning as the coach of the Green Bay Packers.

Why?

• 22 in the fourth and 29 unanswered yesterday for the Vikings to blow out the Pack in the opener.
• 25 in the fourth to go from 20-6 up to a 31-27 loss in Chicago in last year's playoffs.
• 14 unanswered in the fourth to lose to Baltimore in Week 17.
• 16 unanswered in the fourth and overtime to go from 16-6 up to lose 22-16 in the second regular-season meeting to Chicago.

The Packers have now lost six in a row.  The last four of the regular season last year, the playoff game, and the opener this year.  That list is just fourth quarters in that losing streak.

The NFL rigs its games so that you win them in the fourth quarter -- often with ridiculous comebacks.

If there were any legitimacy to the contests at all, it's long past time for LaFleur to go.

However, it isn't.  And, as a result, in part...

THE GOLD MEDAL, THE DUD OF THE WEEK:  The next two major names on the NFL Discipline Blotter, probably:  Puka Nacua and Josh Jacobs.

You don't think the league is sending a message here in both of these cases.

Puka Nacua, after torpedoing last season with his mouth against the league, is in a civil lawsuit against a woman who claims Nacua threw an antisemitic slur (apparently not his first that month, according to Wikipedia!) and bit her last New Year's Eve.  He went into rehab in the offseason.

In the Australia game, a Rams superteam favored to go to and win the Super Bowl was blown to bits by the San Francisco 49ers 27-7 in a game not nearly THAT close.

And now superteam acquisition Myles Garrett is going under the knife for a knee and will miss at least four weeks.

And then Josh Jacobs, the star running back of the Packers, who pled no contest to misdemeanor charges stemming from a May arrest.  And you saw above what happened to the Packers, after another supposed fourth-quarter collapse...

... with many Packer fans bitching about the calls.  If I can find video, I'll get back to you on that.  But I have six words for you Packer fans:

Dez Caught It and Ezekiel Elliott.

Get used to it.  The Pack won't even go .500 this year.

After Further Review, Week One

EDIT TO ADD:  I had, at that point in time, been terminated from X again (#10, 12, or whatever) for telling someone that if they wanted to declare me demonic, they'd have to shoot me.

(Considering I've said that dozens of times on a dozen or so X accounts, and I disagree wholeheartedly with any other outcome, but that's more for a politics post than this one...)

Anyway, I did find this one on Facebook.  Someone please explain to me, sans rigging, how this is not a New Orleans touchdown...

I have no question in my mind that it would be a forward pass, if the ball had any REMOTE chance of going forward.  This one did not.

That should've been a lateral and six -- and Detroit won in overtime when New Orleans failed a two-point conversion under the new NEW overtime rules (both teams must get the ball, regardless of the result of the first drive -- even a touchdown now!).

EDIT TO ADD:  Oh you are fucking serious.

In another rule that punishes defenses and is probably capriciously applied, apparently a pass that backward in that situation is declared a forward pass in the NFL (when it is convenient for the league to do so!).

I wish I were kidding.  My complaint stands, because the Saints defender has barred the Lions QB's arm Tuck Rule-style.

Called it. The league does not tolerate star players with domestic violence...

22-17 Green Bay after 3.

39-22 Minnesota at the end.  22 unanswered in the fourth.

And Packer Fan is bitching about the calls in the fourth.

Dez Caught It -- and that's the first part of learning why.

The Packers won't even be in this year's playoffs.