Day: September 21, 2026

It’s tough to definitively say we know who will be contending for the Lombardi Trophy this season, but it’s hard to ignore what some teams have done so far this season. The San Francisco 49ers have blown out both teams they’ve played, while the defending-champion Seattle Seahawks went on the road and beat an upstart Cardinals team in Week 2. Also, the Kansas City Chiefs and Cincinnati Bengals have put the AFC on notice that they might be back as contenders. But how do they stack up against each other? Here’s my top-10 rankings following Week 2’s Sunday slate and ahead of Monday night’s Giants vs. Rams matchup. The Rams are too talented to leave off this list after one game. That said, though, a loss to the Giants on Monday night would mean they will not be here next week. The Giants were extremely impressive in Week 1, dominating the Cowboys at home to kick off a new era under head coach John Harbaugh. A trip across the country to play one of the most talented rosters in the NFL will be a good litmus test for them. Do not sleep on the Silver and Black after head coach Klint Kubiak quickly changed the culture in Las Vegas. The offensive guru has transformed the Raiders into a disciplined unit that pays attention to detail and avoids the self-inflicted miscues (turnovers, penalties and missed assignments) that lead to losses. Although the wins have not been perfect, the Raiders’ 2-0 start suggests the team is headed in the right direction. Joe Burrow & Co. are quietly re-emerging as a force in the AFC with a couple of W’s to start the season. Although the offense was expected to sizzle with wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase terrorizing opponents, the defense has held its own with defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence dominating the line of scrimmage. With a more balanced roster producing impressive results, the Bengals are back in business as a playoff contender. After taking a year off as a title contender, the Chiefs are officially back in contention with quarterback Patrick Mahomes leading the way. The NFL’s QB1 of the 2020s remains as clutch as ever, delivering big plays in key moments as a playmaking wizard. Running back Kenneth Walker III adds a dynamic element as a runner-receiver with home-run potential. With another stellar performance on Sunday night, Walker became the first player in 40 years to record at least 175 yards from scrimmage in each of his team’s first two games. After registering a couple of gritty wins, the Eagles are well-positioned to make another title run. Jalen Hurts closed out Philadelphia’s Week 2 victory over Tennessee with a “dime” to silence the haters questioning his skills as a title-winning quarterback with a Super Bowl MVP in the trophy case. The 49ers showed no signs of jet lag from their Week 1 trip to Australia, issuing a beatdown on the Dolphins that was not as close as the 35-13 score indicated. The Brock Purdy-led offense is clicking on all cylinders, with running back Christian McCaffrey continuing to dazzle as the ultimate offensive weapon out of the backfield. On the other side of the ball, the defense looks like a juggernaut under new coordinator Raheem Morris, setting the “Bang Bang” gang up to make a deep postseason run. Defensive coordinator Brian Flores put on a clinic, holding a high-powered Chicago Bears offense to three points with a barrage of pressures that disrupted QB Caleb Williams’ timing and suffocated the running game. With a defense that has surrendered just six points over the past six quarters, the Vikings have been able to climb to the top of the NFC North with their starting quarterback on the sidelines. Josh Allen has the Bills’ offense humming with his weekly heroics. The 2024 league MVP could earn some more hardware at season’s end if he continues to put up five-touchdown days while leading the Bills to more primetime wins. The defending champs are primed for a back-to-back title run after jumping out to a 2-0 record with a pair of impressive performances. With Drew Lock thriving as a super-sub in place of Sam Darnold, the Seahawks’ offense hasn’t skipped a beat without its QB1.​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports

The Philadelphia Eagles and the Green Bay Packers flirted with catastrophic losses before pulling out wins at the last minute. But the Tampa Bay Buccaneers couldn’t, losing at home to the awful Cleveland Browns. Like the Bucs, the Los Angeles Chargers dropped to 0-2 as well. But in the Chargers’ case, I actually believe in their opponent: the Las Vegas Raiders. Coach Klint Kubiak has that unit looking much better than it should. The Raiders might even be playoff-worthy. But that’s the obvious stuff. You came here to sound smart. So let’s go below the surface. Let’s spin it forward, dive deeper, think outside the box and read between the lines. If I do my job, you’ll be fluent in the NFL’s Week 2 action. Maybe you’d think that, after two weeks, we know nothing about the Chicago Bears. They scored 59 points on the way to a win over the Panthers in Week 1. They scored three points in a loss to the Vikings in Week 2. The 56-point differential is the third-largest in a team’s first two games — ever. Yes, the conditions were sloppy in the Chicago rain. But this is who the Bears are. They are going to boom and bust from week to week. They’re going to be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. They’re going to be their own yin and yang. In other words, they are the song “Hot N Cold” by Katy Perry. I’ll admit that I took the bait after the first week, thinking that they could score more points than anyone in NFL history. I thought Caleb Williams could insert himself into the MVP debate. We can see fairly clearly now that the Bears aren’t likely to break scoring records, particularly not after the QB’s hamstring injury. And Williams has much longer odds to join the MVP race if he’s out for an extended period after this stinker of a performance. That doesn’t mean this offense won’t realize its immense potential. It’s just that it won’t do it every single week. Think about how young the Bears are. Williams is 24, receiver Luther Burden is 22, tight end Colston Loveland is 22, receiver Rome Odunze is 24 and running back Kyle Monangai is 24. They’re all basically young enough to still be in college. (Although I might be young enough for college, according to all these new NCAA rules.) The offense has some properly grizzled veterans like receiver Kalif Raymond (32), guard Joe Thuney (33) and center Garrett Bradbury (31). And the defense is actually composed largely of veterans. But on offense, it’s no surprise that Raymond and D’Andre Swift (27) have been the most reliable playmakers. They’re also the team’s oldest playmakers. Don’t dismiss what we saw from the Bears in Week 1. It wasn’t a fluke. When Williams gets healthy, we’ll see more of that. We might even see some of that high-scoring with backup quarterback Tyson Bagent. But don’t dismiss how out of sorts the Bears looked in Week 2. That wasn’t fluky either. We’ll see more of that, even when Williams returns to the lineup. Now, all of this unpredictability is sure to make coach Ben Johnson miserable. He expects everything to be perfect. And his youngsters are going to make a lot of mistakes. But maybe as the season goes on, he’ll rein in their variable performances. That seems to be what he does best. He’s already working wonders on Williams. It took nine weeks for Drake Maye to throw four interceptions in 2025. It took him seven quarters in 2026. We knew the New England Patriots quarterback was going to regress in 2026. Maye was brilliant last year, but the playoffs gave us a taste of how he might look against elite defenses. We also knew that when receiver A.J. Brown went down with a high ankle sprain, Maye’s regression was likely to get worse. But he is playing more like he did when he was a rookie in 2024 rather than as the MVP runner-up he was in 2025. This season, Maye has struggled inordinately with situational awareness. He’s playing with too much arm arrogance. You can see that clearly in his interception in the third quarter against the Steelers in Week 2. It was a completely unnecessary risk. “You have got to know that that is not always the time to take a shot on first down,” Maye said when I asked during a press conference. He said that after last week’s loss to the Seahawks, about how he needed to play with more patience after throwing three interceptions in the league’s season-opener. He had 11 days to get his head right. And still, he had what I’d call a mental lapse. Of course, tight end Hunter Henry, the target of the pass that became a pick, didn’t agree. “Yeah, that’s on me, man. It’s a crosser. I was taking it high across his face,” Henry told me after the game. “I was trying to turn. … I need to get my eyes back to [Maye], and that’s all.” Even if the execution is better, I don’t like the decision. It was unnecessary. It was more of the same from last week. In consecutive weeks, Maye had the lead — and an elite defense showing signs of complete control. He had a ground game that was doing enough (and in Week 2, more than enough). And still, Maye forced interceptions. He unnecessarily threw the ball into dangerous situations when he didn’t have to. Against the Seahawks, he threw three in a row to, essentially, lose the game for the Patriots. In New England’s 20-3 win over the Steelers, he threw one in the third quarter. It’s a Benjamin-Button-style reverse maturation for Maye. Offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and coach Mike Vrabel need to figure out how get back their MVP candidate. Reign him in. They’ve done it before. They shouldn’t have to do it again. But clearly, they do. Let’s start with how the Lions’ defense tried (and failed) to stop Bills quarterback Josh Allen, who has been historically dominant to start the season, logging nine total touchdowns in the first two weeks. He is just the second player to do that in the Super Bowl era, following Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes (2013, 2018). It’s important to note Allen’s accolades because it shows that he’s not necessarily a quarterback who can be stopped right now. But as the stats show, the Lions didn’t even slow him down in their 41-31 loss on Thursday. “That quarterback can make things difficult,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said after the game. “[But] we didn’t make life easy on ourselves.” The Lions dialed up one of the most aggressive blitzing game plans that Allen has ever seen. And Allen made that plan look stupid. Detroit blitzed Allen on 55.3% of his dropbacks, the third-highest blitz rate he has faced in a game in the past five seasons, and the highest rate by the Lions under defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard, per Next Gen Stats. Yet Allen completed 20 of his 31 passes for 248 yards and three touchdowns. Facing the blitz, this was an outlier game for Allen. Sending the blitz, this was an outlier for Sheppard. So what happened? Against the blitz, Allen was 12-of-17 for 137 yards and two touchdowns, while adding two scramble runs for 10 yards and a touchdown. “We’ve got to clean up a lot of things defensively right now, particularly on the back end,” Campbell said, revealing that the Lions had a series of coverage breakdowns that allowed big plays. Allen saw the blitzes clearly. He saw the coverages clearly. (And the busts.) We’ve always known he’s among the most physically talented players in NFL history. It’s his mental game that has lapsed, with him — notably — failing to diagnose and/or defeat blitzes from the likes of Chiefs DC Steve Spagnuolo in big moments, often in the playoffs. But Allen’s mental game seems to be getting better. Sheppard couldn’t trick, stump or deceive Allen. All that aggression backfired. On the other side of the ball, Detroit’s offense has its own issues. For starters, QB Jared Goff’s connection with receiver Jameson Williams has me slightly concerned. In his fifth season with the Lions, Williams has been unable to make big plays when they’ve needed him. In the first two weeks, Goff has 533 passing yards and six touchdowns, but Williams has just six catches for 78 yards and no touchdowns. He has snagged just six of his 13 targets (46%). At this time last year, Williams had 131 yards and a touchdown. Last season, he caught 64% of his targets. Williams is a boom-and-bust player, but it feels notable that while the offense has erupted through two games, the WR2 has not. Tight end Sam LaPorta is back, and star running back Jahmyr Gibbs seems to be contributing even more in the passing game. But let’s not make excuses for an elite playmaker: Williams is struggling to haul in his targets. Something’s off with him and Goff. Something’s way, way off with this Lions defense. The only consolation — after a game where there’s this much to fix (and rethink) — is that they have a long week to take a look in the mirror. The film room won’t be a happy place this week. But honest criticism should pay dividends for a team this talented. Green Bay’s 20-17 overtime win over the Jets was brutal to watch — for Packers fans. At times during the game, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one wondering whether coach Matt LaFleur might end up on the hot seat. The offense was sluggish. Jordan Love looked stumped on what to do without help from his offensive line or run game. Against the Jets. And there was the context that made it worse: LaFleur had lost the previous five games, extending back into the 2025 season. It’s not just that he’s lost so many games in a row. It’s how he’s done it, with an underwhelming display of in-game management throughout the streak. Despite all that, he’s not going anywhere. And it’s not because the Packers somehow pulled out a win. It’s because of money. LaFleur just signed a contract extension in the offseason, and he will get a very, very lengthy leash — probably extending safely into 2027 in just about every scenario. The Packers and LaFleur are a package deal for the foreseeable future. It might be frustrating for Packers fans to hear, because Love is already 27 years old. Because he sat for so many years, his window is naturally shorter. I’m not going to go as far as saying that the Packers shortened that window further by extending LaFleur, but his longstanding weaknesses haven’t changed. Until they do, he’s going to get in Love’s path to a Super Bowl. It’s hard to put too much faith in LaFleur. For the foreseeable future, however, Green Bay has no choice. Kenneth Walker is first in the NFL in rush yards over expected (125) and expected points added as a runner (13.5), per Next Gen Stats. In back to back weeks, he has set career highs in forced missed tackles, with 14 in Week 1 and 15 in Week 2. You can’t always get what you want. But the Chiefs have. It seemed like they were getting what they needed when they inked Walker to a three-year, $43 million free-agent deal this offseason. He would bring hope to the run game — often contributing the explosive plays the offense sorely lacked. But he has done more than that. He has become the central cog in the offensive rebuild, bringing fresh life to the unit that looked stale. Everyone looks better, from quarterback Patrick Mahomes to tight end Travis Kelce to coach Andy Reid. The Chiefs are third in the league in points per game at 32. They’re eighth in explosive play rate (15.2%) and seventh in success rate (49.0%). They may not be the best offense in the NFL (yet). That’s all a bunch of numbers that say this: The Chiefs are fun to watch again. The Kansas City offense isn’t laboring, like last year. There’s a weight lifted off Mahomes’ shoulders. The whole unit looks free to attack the field. That’s because of Walker, who is forcing missed tackles at a faster clip than any other running back in the league. He’s stacking up expected points added on the ground. And he’s helping the Chiefs close out games (sometimes early) with massive plays. Last week, it was his 60-yard touchdown on a fourth-and-1 that psychologically seemed to crush the Broncos. And this week against the Colts, he helped clinch the game-winning field goal, with a third-and-1 reception that got the Chiefs down into chip-shot range. The Chiefs have forced a new, under-center offensive identity that has Reid stealing out of Sean McVay’s playbook — and stealing personnel out of Mike Macdonald’s backfield. It might be humbling for Reid to be the one who is copying other coaches. Usually, it’s the other way around. But that doesn’t mean Reid is washed up. To the contrary, he’s keeping up with the times brilliantly. Walker is helping him do just that.​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports