playDan GrazianoSep 20, 2026, 06:55 PM ETCloseDan Graziano is a senior NFL national reporter for ESPN, covering the entire league and breaking news. Dan also contributes to Get Up, NFL Live, SportsCenter, ESPN Radio, Sunday NFL Countdown and Fantasy Football Now. He is a New Jersey native who joined ESPN in 2011, and he is also the author of two published novels.Multiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsOK, so we all know we aren’t supposed to overreact to Week 1 of the NFL season. But what about Week 2???Is this enough data yet?
Are we ready to crown the Bills as the team to beat? Are the Panthers truly an offensive juggernaut? Are teams out of their minds to not be hiring Brian Flores as a head coach? Is the Bengals’ defense suddenly really good?Yes, of course it’s still too soon.
And of course we still don’t know anything. But we have twice as much information as we had a week ago, so why not dive in? It’s our Week 2 overreactions column, where we look at five potential takeaways and judge them as legitimate stances or irrational overreactions. Plus, we hit a few fantasy football overreactions at the bottom.Jump to: Rodgers on thin ice?
Same Eagles offense? Huge QB problems for Atlanta? Flores should be a head coach? Lions missing the playoffs?
Fantasy overreactionsAaron Rodgers will get benched at some point this seasonRodgers came back for one more season with the Steelers and reunited with his old Packers coach Mike McCarthy. Neat story … not such a neat offense so far.The Steelers were sluggish in their Week 1 victory over the Falcons, and they were putrid Sunday in a 20-3 loss to the Patriots in Foxborough, Massachusetts. The Patriots sacked Rodgers four times. One of those resulted in a fumble that New England ran back for a touchdown to effectively ice the game early in the fourth quarter.Rodgers had no answer for New England’s pressure, whether the Patriots were blitzing or not.
He was 5-of-12 for 34 yards and four sacks when pressured Sunday. The Patriots blitzed him on 19 of 44 dropbacks, and Rodgers was 8-for-17 for 42 yards, two sacks and an interception on those. Through two games this season, Rodgers is completing 33% of his passes for an average of 3.5 yards per attempt when pressured. This is not sustainable, and the fact that Rodgers is 42 years old makes the extent to which he’s getting pressured and hit all the more worrisome.Verdict: OVERREACTIONI simply do not believe that McCarthy would bench Rodgers in his final season for Mason Rudolph, Will Howard or Drew Allar — at least not until the Steelers are eliminated from postseason contention.
These two guys reunited in Pittsburgh this year to pursue a championship together, and no matter what the rest of us think, they believe it’s possible and won’t give up the ghost until they have to.Plus, you really can’t lay Sunday’s performance entirely at Rodgers’ feet. The Steelers need to figure out a run game and some better protection schemes if they’re going to keep Rodgers upright and have a chance this season. It’s just too early to sit here and predict that they won’t.The Eagles’ offense isn’t any better than it was last seasonYes, they won. They almost always do.
The Eagles came back to beat the Titans 24-20 on Sunday in oppressive September Nashville heat. But still … they had 2.8 yards per rush, 4.7 yards per play overall and two turnovers. It just felt like everything was difficult, which was a 2025 characteristic of the Eagles’ offense — one they were hoping to improve with another coordinator change.Quarterback Jalen Hurts was pressured on 24 of 42 dropbacks, which is the highest percentage (57%) the Eagles have allowed since ESPN began tracking pressure metrics in 2009 and raises concerns about the effectiveness of a banged-up offensive line that’s playing without star guard Landon Dickerson. Two years ago, when the Eagles steamrolled their way to their second Super Bowl title, their offensive line was straight-up dominant.
It has not been thus since the 2024 season.Verdict: OVERREACTIONSure, Hurts was pressured a lot, but he was awesome Sunday when pressured. He was 11-for-20 for 137 yards and two touchdowns, including the winning TD in the final seconds. Saquon Barkley left this game early with an injury, and although he came back briefly in the second half, he wasn’t able to finish the contest. That surely emboldened the Titans’ pressure plan.I get that it doesn’t look great or smooth.
But it’s Week 2, and the Eagles are 2-0 while they’re putting things together. Two of the big questions coming into this season were whether Hurts could thrive with all the change that was made around him and whether DeVonta Smith could fill the No. 1 receiver role with A.J. Brown traded to New England. Well, Hurts was heroic in leading the comeback, and Smith caught 10 passes for 117 yards and a touchdown.There are a lot of offenses with a lot less hope than the Eagles deserve to have in theirs right now.play0:33Jalen Hurts airs it out to DeVonta Smith for Eagles TDMatt Ryan needs to find his shoulder pads and helmet because the Falcons might need him at QBRyan is in his first season as the Falcons’ president of football.
And the greatest quarterback in franchise history cannot like what he’s seeing right now out of his team’s QB situation.Michael Penix Jr. has missed the first two games while still recovering from last season’s ACL tear. Tua Tagovailoa has missed both games with a back injury. Cooper Rush has been awful in both games as the fill-in starter, and rookie Jack Strand clearly isn’t ready. The Falcons’ quarterback situation is a complete mess.
Head coach Kevin Stefanski has to be wondering how he could possibly have left Cleveland’s QB situation for one that isn’t demonstrably better.Verdict: OVERREACTIONIt sounds like there’s at least a chance that Penix can start this Thursday’s game in Green Bay. And while Penix’s past performance isn’t any kind of guarantee that he’ll play well, he’s surely going to be a better option than Rush has been.Moreover, the Falcons need to get a long look at Penix at some point this season before they decide whether the No. 8 pick of the 2024 draft is part of their long-term QB solution or they need to look for one in next year’s draft. This is a brand-new coaching staff and a brand-new front office with no built-in loyalty to Penix and a mandate to fix the quarterback situation once and for all. Ryan can leave his shoulder pads in the closet for now, as there are still likely plenty of twists and turns to come in this saga as the season moves along.Brian Flores deserves another chance to be a head coachThe Vikings’ defensive coordinator is as locked in right now as any playcaller on either side of the ball.
A week after the Bears scored a stunning 59 points against Carolina, the Vikings held Chicago to just three points in a 9-3 victory that should never be replayed on any television or internet-connected device for the remainder of time.Flores’ defense blitzed Packers QB Jordan Love on 72% of his dropbacks in Week 1 and then turned it up even further Sunday, blitzing Bears QB Caleb Williams on 78% of his dropbacks. That’s the highest blitz percentage any NFL quarterback has faced since Detroit’s Jared Goff was blitzed on 79% of his dropbacks in Week 18 of the 2023 season by … yep, the Vikings. What’s remarkable about what Flores is doing right now isn’t just that he’s blitzing at such an extreme rate — it’s that his players are so bought into what he’s calling, and so practiced at executing it, that it feels like Flores could call anything he wants right now and count on it to work.This is his fourth season as Minnesota’s defensive coordinator, and the former Dolphins head coach has established himself as possibly the scariest playcaller in the league.Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTIONI understand this issue is complicated by what we’ve learned about Flores’ time as Miami’s head coach and the fact that he still has a pending lawsuit against t
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