playBill BarnwellSep 14, 2026, 07:55 AM ETCloseBill Barnwell is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com. He analyzes football on and off the field like no one else on the planet, writing about in-season X’s and O’s, offseason transactions and so much more. He is the host of the Bill Barnwell Show podcast, with episodes released weekly. Barnwell joined ESPN in 2011 as a staff writer at Grantland.Multiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsThere 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 | RavensBears 59, Panthers 37While 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.play0:30Caleb Williams dimes Cole Kmet for 22-yard TDWhat 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.
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