NFL Week 1 offense explosion: Bears, Ravens, Bills, Jaguars

There are few joys in sports like the first Sunday of the NFL season. After an entire offseason without professional football, we finally get a flood of Week 1 games all at once. NFL RedZone springs to life for the first time since January. Some years, the anticipation can be more exciting than the actual action, with offenses playing in the regular season together for the first time struggling to find a rhythm. This year, though, offensive struggles were few and far between.

Nine different teams scored 30 or more points in the early window on Sunday, just the second time that has ever happened. And with the Vikings unexpectedly making it to 39 points in their comeback win over the Packers, 10 teams scored 30 or more points in all on Sunday. That’s the first time that has happened since 2002 and just the third time it has happened on the opening Sunday of the NFL season since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 (1986 being the other).

Some of those big scores were a product of uncommon circumstances. The Lions and Saints went to overtime, when they each scored a touchdown. The Vikings scored four consecutive touchdowns in the second half to come back against Green Bay, with three of those drives starting deep in Packers territory after a big kickoff return and two defensive turnovers, making life easier for a Carson Wentz-led offense to rack up points. A Bengals defense that forced and recovered four fumbles against the Buccaneers took one to the house for a defensive score and set up the offense with two short fields.

Subscribe: ‘The Bill Barnwell Show’

Others attempted to keep up in shootouts but fell short. The Texans managed 31 points against a conservative Bills defense in C.J. Stroud‘s first start since his playoff meltdown. But after driving into the red zone in the last minute of the game, Stroud was sacked twice on the final three plays, including on a three-man rush that produced a game-ending strip sack. And while the Panthers scored 37 points on a day when Bryce Young threw for 361 yards, well, the Bears scored more points on offense than any team has since the Dolphins went for 70 in September 2023.

Today, I’m going to focus on the four other teams that hit 30-plus points and how their offenses got off to blistering-hot starts. The Bears, Bills, Jaguars and Ravens all had high hopes for their offenses heading into Week 1, but they scored a combined 170 points in their season-opening victories. How did they pull that off? Were the defenses more to blame? Or should we be projecting these offenses to lead the league in scoring the rest of the way?

I’ll run through all four, starting in Chicago, where the Bears heard Ben Johnson say that he wanted to field the highest-scoring offense in NFL history and proceeded to tie the 2019 Ravens in scoring the most points on offense of any team in NFL history in a season-opening performance.

Jump to:
Bears | Bills | Jaguars | Ravens

While there will still be concerns about the Bears’ defense after it allowed Bryce Young & Co. to score 37 points, defense isn’t going to matter if you’re approaching 60. In their season opener, the Bears’ offense scored more points than they have in any other game in the 105-year history of the franchise. They somehow scored 59 points on offense without a single catch from tight end Colston Loveland, the sort of combination that would seem impossible if it hadn’t just played out Sunday afternoon in Charlotte.

To get there, the Bears produced something that we didn’t see from them on offense in 2025: big plays on the ground. For all the things the Bears did well during Ben Johnson’s first year at the helm, creating big rushes wasn’t one of them. They had just four runs of 25 or more yards last season, tied with the Saints for 25th in the NFL.

It took the 2026 Bears all of one game to match their seasonlong total from a year ago. Johnson’s offense produced four 25-plus-yard gains on the ground against the Panthers, including touchdown runs of 28 yards (by D’Andre Swift), 29 yards (Caleb Williams) and 61 yards (Kyle Monangai). Swift added a 32-yarder early in the game to make it four. The Bears finished with 291 rushing yards on 39 attempts, averaging 7.5 yards per carry.

The Panthers don’t have a great run defense, given that they ranked 24th in DVOA on the ground in 2025. And defensive issues certainly made life easier for the Bears. Carolina inadvertently doubled Rome Odunze over the middle of the field instead of passing him off from one defender to the next as Williams scrambled just before halftime, leaving a free path for the young quarterback to escape a four-man rush and scamper up the sideline for a 29-yard score. The Panthers also didn’t get anybody into the A-gap on Swift’s 32-yard run in the first quarter, then missed multiple tackle attempts on the newly extended back before he changed fields to pick up extra yardage.

On the whole, though, the Bears were dominant running the ball because they simply overwhelmed the Panthers. Tight end Cole Kmet had one of those games where you can’t wait to get back into the building for film review; in addition to making a great catch on a leak concept for a 22-yard touchdown, Kmet made big blocks on Swift and Monangai touchdown runs, driving defenders out of the play to create run lanes. The right side of Chicago’s O-line — highly paid guard Jonah Jackson and budding star Darnell Wright — had an excellent game. And both Swift and Monangai got more than what was blocked, which wasn’t always the case a year ago. The Bears were average on rush yards over expectation per attempt on designed runs last season (NFL Next Gen Stats), but they were comfortably tops in the league in Week 1.

Williams made a number of plays with his legs, but he was also just as spectacular as a passer. The 2024 first overall pick has deservedly lived in the dreams of Bears fans all offseason for the memorable moments he had down the stretch and into the postseason in 2025, creating magic in the fourth quarter for the Bears as they led late comebacks. We know Williams still has that capacity to extend plays and deliver passes that few other quarterbacks on the planet can make, and we saw a little bit of that Sunday.

The touchdown pass to Kmet was inch-perfect. Williams also extended a play, scrambled, then threw against the grain on a deep out to Kalif Raymond for 28 yards. (Raymond surprisingly led the team in targets, catches and receiving yards.) If there had been any need for late-game heroics, Williams was playing like they would have come.

play

Caleb Williams dimes Cole Kmet for 22-yard TD

What was really striking, though, was just how in-control Williams looked as a passer, something that wasn’t the case on a regular basis last season. The Panthers didn’t offer much of a pass rush, as their 16.1% pressure rate was the worst of any team in Week 1, but Williams didn’t give them much time to generate one, either. He was really effective early in the game at getting to the end of his drop and getting the ball out quickly. And when Williams did extend plays, they usually produced positive results.

With the ball coming out when it was supposed to within the context of the offense and little pressure from Carolina, Williams was also a more accurate passer. His off-target rate was a league-worst 20.2% a year ago, but it improved to 13.8% in Week 1. That was almost exactly league-average. Williams’ minus-6.7% completion percentage over expectation (CPOE) was the worst in football among regular starters in 2025, per NFL Next Gen Stats. His plus-11.4% CPOE on Sunday was the third-best mark of Week 1 and the best mark he has posted in a single game under Johnson.

Are there elements that probably won’t stick? Yes. The Bears went 4-for-4 in the red zone and 10-of-14 on third down, rates even the best offenses in football would struggle to hit for any stretch of time. They started three possessions in Carolina territory, turning those drives into 17 points. Plus, the Panthers helped bail the Bears out, including a roughing the passer penalty on second-and-20 and an offside that wiped off a Williams interception at the goal line. The degree of difficulty will increase dramatically over the next two weeks, with the Bears set to face the Vikings and Eagles at home.

While they probably can’t count on creating four huge runs every week moving forward, though, there was very little about the Bears’ performance that felt fluky or unsustainable. They were an effective team on the ground in 2025, so it’s hardly out of the question that they could create more explosive runs this season. Williams looked more comfortable and played more comfortably in his second year under Johnson. If anything, the offense could look even more explosive with Loveland actually figuring into the mix.

They probably won’t score 59 points every week, but based on what they did against the Panthers, the Bears absolutely look like they can contend to be the best offense in the NFL this season.

The Ravens might have also joined the Bears in topping 50 points if they had more healthy wide receivers to play. Zay Flowers racked up 150 receiving yards in the first half before tweaking his hamstring and sitting out the rest of the game. Rookie Ja’Kobi Lane had a touchdown overturned by a penalty before suffering a wrist injury. By the end of the game, LaJohntay Wester and Chris Moore were running routes for Baltimore alongside Rashod Bateman.

By then, of course, the game was already out of reach. If it weren’t for a holding penalty on center Jovaughn Gwyn that wiped away that touchdown pass to Lane, the Ravens would have scored touchdowns on each of their first five possessions, gaining 254 yards along the way. And even without two of his top three wide receivers, Lamar Jackson produced a 77-yard touchdown drive and a 43-yard push for a field goal in the fourth quarter, putting any hope of a late Colts comeback to bed.

This was one of the offenses I was most intrigued to watch in Week 1. The Ravens are one of several teams moving a mobile quarterback under center more often this season, a concept I’m going to write about in greater detail later this week. The shift wasn’t going to be quite as significant for Jackson, who played in a pro-style offense at Louisville, as it was going to be for the likes of Jayden Daniels and Kyler Murray, but this was still Jackson’s first game with new coordinator Declan Doyle after a brilliant three-year stretch under Todd Monken.

The early returns are impressive. Jackson was 6-of-8 for 114 yards operating from under center Sunday, including a 49-yard play to Flowers out of a boot concept to the left, the sort of explosive pass concept the Ravens were hoping to create off play-action by moving Jackson under center more often. One of his two incompletions was a spike to stop the clock, and Bateman was actually open on a scissors concept on the other, only for Jackson to feel pressure around the right side and get the ball out a tick too late. That timing will come more naturally as Jackson’s under center more often.

In his first game as his team’s primary playcaller, the 30-year-old Doyle delivered on much of the excitement Ravens fans have expressed about the Ben Johnson disciple. He built a great game plan around using Flowers to attack the middle of the field, keeping him away from Indy’s top two corners (Sauce Gardner and Charvarius Ward) in the process. Flowers picked on slot corner Justin Walley, who was no match.

Doyle also got Flowers into the backfield. While that surprisingly included one snap where Flowers lined up at fullback, the more notable play would have been lining him up as a halfback next to Jackson in the second quarter. Flowers came out of the backfield and ran a choice route, which typically requires the receiver to feel the leverage of the coverage and run away into space. The Colts made life easier by simply not covering Flowers at all, and the star wideout took advantage of the missed assignment by taking a short catch 54 yards to the house.

Doyle isn’t the first coordinator to get his top wideout into the backfield for a choice route — the Seahawks, for one, put Jaxon Smith-Njigba in the backfield for his touchdown catch against the Rams in the NFC Championship Game last season — but it’s another wrinkle that creates havoc for opposing defenses. Flowers was on pace for a 300-yard game before his injury. If he can stay on the field, Baltimore’s top wideout is going to have a massive season.

play

Derrick Henry proved to be ‘excellent’ fantasy pick with Week 1 performance

One of the other advantages of going under center is creating a more diverse, difficult-to-predict run game and more natural angles for outside zone concepts. Those under-center outside zone runs were Derrick Henry‘s bread-and-butter in Tennessee, and so it probably shouldn’t be any surprise that he excelled in Doyle’s debut. Henry ran the ball 24 times for 144 yards and three touchdowns, including a 32-yard touchdown in the second quarter. He had 11- and 22-yard runs on zone concepts during the blowout victory.

Jackson’s designed run rate dropped last season, and he had only one designed run Sunday. But the two-time MVP showed that he can still make an impact with his legs. Jackson scored from 5 yards out on a pistol zone-read concept, then added scrambles of 16 and 19 yards, the former seeing Jackson duck under two pass rushers before converting a third-and-16 with his legs. If there were concerns that Jackson had lost an athletic step, it didn’t seem to be on the tape in Week 1.

It was promising to see a new-look Ravens offensive line get off to an excellent run-blocking start in Week 1, but the interior is still an obvious weak spot on this offense. Gwyn, debuting at center and making his first career start in his fourth season as a pro, cost the Ravens a touchdown with a holding call. First-round pick Olaivavega Ioane erased a pair of first downs with holding penalties. A blown assignment between Gwyn and left guard John Simpson allowed Grover Stewart to burst through the A-gap unblocked on fourth down in the red zone, quickly blowing up a play that would end with an incompletion and a turnover on downs.

While the Bears are set to face stiffer competition, the Ravens have a soft slate of defenses in the weeks to come. They face the Saints, Cowboys, Titans, Falcons, Browns, Bengals and Bills over the next seven weeks. It’s going to be tough to consistently create big plays through the passing game if Flowers is out for any extended period of time, but given that Jackson hit Moore for a 53-yard completion in the second half, there should still be some explosiveness in this offense if Flowers misses a week or two against subpar defensive competition.

This game served as a measure of revenge for Josh Allen, who had appeared to be flummoxed whenever he stepped into Reliant Stadium. The Bills collapsed in the second half in a 22-19 overtime loss to the Texans in the 2019 season, with Allen infamously attempting to hit fullback Patrick DiMarco with a go ball on his first pass attempt in OT. The star quarterback went 9-of-30 with two picks in his return to Houston in 2024, then 16-of-33 for 151 yards with two more interceptions when the Bills lost to the Texans in 2025. There’s no shame in struggling against one of the NFL’s best defenses, but over the past two years, Allen had posted a 28.2 Total QBR against the Texans and a league-best 72.8 mark against everyone else.

After those three losses in Houston, Allen finally turned things around with his best performance against the Texans on Sunday. It wasn’t always pretty, but Allen went 20-of-29 for 334 yards and two touchdowns while adding two more scores as a runner. He also drew a 46-yard pass interference penalty on Kamari Lassiter to set up one of those rushing scores. Lassiter helped get the Bills off the field by tackling Allen short of the sticks on fourth down in the first half, but Allen would have the last laugh.

With 1:41 left in the game and the Bills trailing by one point, Allen took the lead back on a third-and-11 by hitting receiver Joshua Palmer for a 34-yard touchdown past Lassiter. It was a perfect throw in an absolutely critical situation, one in which most quarterbacks would be trying to protect the football and keep their team in position for a field goal to take the lead. It made a huge difference, given that the Texans then had to drive for a touchdown instead of simply needing to get in field goal range, where their drive eventually stalled.

Of course, Lassiter very nearly won the battle and the game for his team. On the snap before the touchdown pass to Palmer, Allen tossed a lob off his back foot in the direction of DJ Moore, who didn’t seem to know that the ball was coming. Lassiter turned to make a game-sealing interception, only for the ball to bounce off his chest for an incompletion.

That’s an incredibly narrow line to toe as we evaluate Allen’s performance and try to draw broader conclusions. If Lassiter catches that, Allen’s great game is wasted by a foolish decision late in the contest, and there’s still something about playing in that dome that seems to bring the old, dangerous Allen out of the reformed signal-caller. But Lassiter couldn’t make the catch, and Allen immediately delivered an incredibly clutch TD pass on the next snap to win the game for the Bills. Likewise, Allen connected with Moore for a 43-yard touchdown on a throw that was nearly tipped away by Reed Blankenship, who might have been a step away from picking it off.

In his first game as head coach, Joe Brady did seem to make one change to the Bills’ offense, and it turned out to be an important shift. While Dalton Kincaid was efficient on a per-route basis from 2023 to 2025, the Bills simply didn’t use him all that often. Kincaid ran routes on 58% of Buffalo’s dropbacks when healthy enough to play, averaging 2.0 yards per route run in the process.

On Sunday, though, Kincaid ran routes on 71% of Allen’s dropbacks, trailing only Moore among Bills pass catchers and marking his highest route participation rate since the first half of the 2024 season. Kincaid caught five passes for a career-high 130 yards, including completions of 35, 38 and 40 yards, beating three different Texans defensive backs in the process. Brady used Kincaid as a split-out receiver before motioning him inside to try to create mismatches and conflict with the Texans’ defense. This was his best game as a pro.

Kincaid was one of the answers the Bills were hoping to lean on as they dealt with man coverage issues over the past couple of seasons. While teams don’t want to play man defense against the Bills out of concerns about Allen’s legs, Buffalo’s middling receiving corps had left Allen without a receiver who could reliably win against man coverage. From 2024 to 2025, Allen ranked first in the NFL in Total QBR against zone coverage but just 17th against man-to-man defense, a figure that includes his impact as a scrambler.

The Texans surprisingly played into that discrepancy on Sunday. Per Next Gen Stats, Matt Burke’s defense played zone on 24 of Allen’s 32 dropbacks in Week 1. To be fair, Allen torched both coverages, posting a 130.1 passer rating against zone and a 129.7 mark against man, including the game-winning score to Palmer. The Texans had played man nearly 39% of the time in their 2024 and 2025 victories over Buffalo, with Allen going 6-of-22 for 94 yards and an interception against man coverage across those two games. With a healthy defense, this felt like a changeup gone wrong for DeMeco Ryans.

Could Moore have discouraged the Texans from playing more man? This was a successful debut for the former Panthers and Bears wideout, who caught five passes for 100 yards in addition to drawing that 46-yard pass interference penalty. Most of Moore’s success, though, came against zone looks, with Allen hitting him on a pair of in-breakers against Cover 3 and a flood concept before the 43-yard touchdown against Cover 2.

In a game in which the Bills were either ahead or narrowly behind for most of the contest, the Texans also weren’t able to pin their star edge rushing duo’s ears back and go after Allen. Danielle Hunter knocked away a third-down pass attempt, and Will Anderson Jr. managed a team-high six pressures, but the duo failed to sack Allen once across 32 dropbacks on Sunday. The Texans had two sacks total and managed only three quick pressures after generating seven in both the 2024 and 2025 matchups.

Playing one of the league’s best defenses in what hasn’t been a very friendly stadium in years past, even an average day from Allen would have been a surprisingly effective performance. But with the Bills’ defense allowing the Texans to produce one of their best offensive games of the past year, Brady needed something great from Allen. And while Allen very nearly threw the game away, the second chance the Texans gave the former MVP to win the contest was one too many.

play

DJ Moore showed in Week 1 that he has ‘immense upside’ in fantasy

I’ll finish in Jacksonville, where Trevor Lawrence was facing no such onslaught from the opposing offense. Deshaun Watson ended the first Browns drive with an interception, the second with a dropped interception and the third with a strip sack, while the fourth halted after a fumble by KC Concepcion. While Watson finished 16-of-22 for 205 yards, most of that production came in garbage time. By the time the Browns showed any signs of life on offense in this game, the Jaguars were already up 34-3 and running out the clock.

In his 2026 debut, Lawrence picked up from where he left off in the 2025 regular season, with nearly as many touchdown passes (four) as incompletions (five). He was particularly effective and accurate throwing downfield. On passes traveling 10 or more yards in the air, Lawrence went 10-of-12 for 179 yards and three touchdowns, with one of those incompletions coming on a Brenton Strange drop. That 83.3% completion percentage on intermediate and deep throws would have been the second-best single-game mark for a player with 10 attempts or more in 2025, trailing only Jared Goff‘s performance against the Rams.

While Lawrence played well and coach Liam Coen mixed in some wrinkles to create throwing lanes off play-action, this frankly looked easy for the Jags on offense. From a Cleveland perspective, too many of these throws were pitch and catch, and when the throws weren’t perfect, Jacksonville’s receivers made great catches, highlighted by a diving touchdown grab by Parker Washington in the first half. Lawrence had just two tight-window completions all day, which I say not as a knock on his performance but as a reflection of how open Jacksonville’s receivers consistently got.

This felt like a Browns defense that sorely missed departed star pass rusher Myles Garrett and defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz. Jared Verse didn’t manage a single hurry in his Browns debut, while new defensive coordinator Mike Rutenberg had a Browns unit that successfully played a lot of aggressive man coverage under Schwartz instead playing a passive, static zone defense. Lawrence faced zone looks on 20 of his 25 dropbacks and wasn’t subject to a single quick pressure all game. The Browns blitzed just three times, even while Lawrence shredded their four-man rush.

Even without Garrett in the mix, limiting Lawrence to one sack (albeit an 11-yard takedown on a third-and-1) was an impressive performance by an offensive line that loomed as a potential weakness heading into the season. Likewise, while the run game wasn’t spectacular, the three-headed unit of Bhayshul Tuten, Chris Rodriguez Jr. and Ameer Abdullah managed 121 yards on 25 carries, with a 52% success rate and five runs of 10 yards or more. Jacksonville generated zero rush yards over expected, suggesting that its runners got exactly what was blocked on average throughout the game.

play

Trevor Lawrence evades Browns, fires to Jakobi Meyers for a TD

Again, I think that’s a testament to how well the Jaguars controlled the line of scrimmage and how little the Browns showed on the defensive side of the ball, where there wasn’t enough push. When the Jags did struggle in the run game, it was usually a product of their own mental mistakes, like a pulling blocker overrunning a defender or tripping over a teammate, as opposed to Cleveland forcing the issue.

If the Jaguars had done this against the 2023 or 2025 Browns, this would be a wildly impressive performance. Watching this game back, though, I’m very concerned that the Browns just aren’t going to be a good defense or anything resembling the unit we saw with Garrett on the field at his best over the past few seasons. They didn’t seem to have any sort of defensive identity and looked like an entirely different unit from the one that kept an awful offense in games a year ago.

Scoring on six of your first seven drives, as the Jags did Sunday, is impressive against any caliber of defense, but this was almost too easy upon further review. Jacksonville’s best offensive performance of 2025 was in Week 16, when it scored 34 points on the Broncos and beat the top seed in the AFC on the road. If the Jaguars can do something like that again in Denver when the two teams meet next week, it’ll mean a lot more than what we saw against the Browns in Week 1 — even if it was an impressive performance from Lawrence and his unit in the home opener.