Week 2 NFL observations you can steal to impress your friends

The NFL is back, and so is our grab bag of observations you can steal to sound smart in your next Zoom meeting. 

We’re two weeks into a bizarre NFL season that for the first time felt as normal as it could. We’ve gotten past the first week obviousness of how strange it is to not see fans in the stands or how weird it is that Week 1 was the first football action we’d seen since the Super Bowl.

But unfortunately, the normalcy of football extended to the annual rash of injuries that alter the course of the season. It was feared that the first week of the year would feature injuries to players that hadn’t been able to warm their bodies up with preseason play and the lack of the first-week injuries lulled us into a false sense of security.

Reality hit hard in Week 2, as the injury list not only piled up fast but did so with notable and impactful names. Nick Bosa, Saquon Barkley, and Drew Lock were all knocked out of their respective games in the first half and others like Christian McCaffrey and Jimmy Garappolo followed. Before the games started, Saints receiver Mike Thomas was ruled out for the next 2-3 weeks, and everything snowballed from there.

It wasn’t all bad in Week 2, however. With the exception of a few games, every single matchup was exciting and featured some sort of takeaway for both the football diehard and the casual fan.

So before we get ahead of ourselves and start breaking down Week 3, let’s marinate on what we saw this weekend. Stick your hand in our grab bag of observations and steal a few to make yourself sound smart.

No, the 49ers aren’t as screwed as it seems

Let’s not mince words here: Things are dire for the San Francisco 49ers.

They are not, however, fatal.

No team lost more this week than San Francisco, which saw four starters leave before Sunday’s game was over which added to an already growing overall total. The Niners began Sunday without George Kittle, Deebo Samuel, Dee Ford, or Richard Sherman and lost Nick Bosa, Jimmy Garoppolo, Solomon Thomas, and Raheem Mostert to injuries against the Jets.

As many as 10 key players for the 49ers are now injured with Bosa done for the year with a torn ACL. All of that seems to spell doom for San Francisco’s hopes of getting back to the Super Bowl, but all is not as lost as it appears.

Luck factors into things far more than we give credit (just look at how the Chiefs secured an all-important No. 1 seed in the playoffs last year) and the 49ers are lucky that this bad break is happening when it is. San Francisco’s next three games are against the Giants, Eagles, and Dolphins who are a combined 0-6. Two of those three games are back home in Santa Clara and none of them are games they should lose if they need to keep starters out to get healthy. If all goes well, the Niners could come out of this with a 4-1 record before the going gets tough.

Coming out of that three-game stretch is a gauntlet that will define the Niners season. Starting Week 6, the 49ers will play the Rams, Patriots, Seahawks, Packers, and Saints before heading into their bye week. Those teams combine for a record of 7-2, and we will learn a lot about the Niners in that stretch; using this upcoming stretch against winless teams to get as healthy as possible for the gauntlet stretch is of the utmost importance.

As the blowout against the Jets progressed, it became clear that players like Garoppolo and Mostert didn’t need to play given that they were both hobbled and the Niners were already dropping like flies. Garoppolo’s absence, in particular, felt precautionary more than anything and that’s an approach that should continue in the coming weeks.

The Super Bowl hangover comes in many forms for teams, and the Niners are already up against it despite only having one loss. The strength of the Seahawks and the surprise success of the Cardinals, combined with the resurgent Rams, makes things even harder for the Niners given everything that has happened, but Kyle Shanahan is still a top tier coach and San Francisco is still a very good team. They might not be able to withstand the heat of the stretch that awaits them starting Week 6, but to count them out before they prove their no longer capable of contending is foolish.

Packers should hang their NFC North banner now 

A perfect example of how overreactions should never be used as needles on a compass is the Green Bay Packers.

When the Packers traded up in the first round of the draft to select Jordan Love, the reaction was similar to when Aaron Rodgers was drafted in 2005. Rodgers was seen as the replacement to Brett Favre and Love was seen as the same thing to Rodgers. A key difference was the Packers didn’t trade up for Rodgers and they weren’t Super Bowl contenders when they drafted him.

Both of those things were true when Love was selected and no conversation about the Packers could be had this summer without Love being mentioned.

Two weeks into the season, we’ve forgotten that Love is on the team and all the talk is about how Rodgers and the Packers are one of the hottest offenses in football. Through their first two games, the Packers have scored 85-points and racked up over 1,000 yards of offense. Rodgers, who many began to flirt with saying was in the infancy of being “washed”, has thrown for 604 yards and six touchdowns, and has completed nearly 70 percent of his passes through two games.

Aside from that, Aaron Jones became just the second Packers player in the Super Bowl era to have over 200 scrimmage yards and three touchdowns in a regular season game. Devante Adams has barely started getting going and the Green Bay defense is starting to settle in after a rough first week.

None of this sounds like a team ready to move on into a new era any time soon, and Rodgers doesn’t look like a quarterback about to be usurped. Punctuating the dominance on the field is how weak the NFC North looks: The Vikings sitting at 0-2, the Lions remain abysmal and the only challenger for the title is the Bears. If the Packers continue this insane upward trajectory there’s nothing in the NFC North — and few things in the entire NFC — that will be ablet to stop them.

Kyler Murray can win MVP

With each week that passes, the idea that Kyler Murray is the most valuable player in football gets less crazy. The MVP Award is a narrative award and Murray is writing one of the best stories of the season. Arizona is one of the most high octane offenses in football, Murray as elite receiving talent around him, he’s dazzling us all with highlight reel plays, and the Cardinals sit atop the NFC West — one of the toughest divisions in football — with an undefeated record.

All of these things checkboxes needed to be considered a serious contender for MVP and Murray is racing out to a hot start.

Before the Washington Football Team could blink on Sunday, it was already in the process of getting thrown into an active volcano by Murray. He’s a year removed from being a controversial first overall pick and is already living up to expectations that seemed lofty at the time. The idea that the Cardinals were irrational for drafting Murray a year after drafting a quarterback in the Top 10 has aged so tremendously poorly so tremendously fast.

And it’s things like this that are the reason why:

Murray is the first player in NFL history to throw for 500 yards and run for 150 over the first 2 weeks. He’s making a habit of juking defenders out of their jocks and effortlessly scoring long rushing touchdowns as though it’s a pregame walkthrough. Tony Gonzalez called him the most exciting player in the NFL after the game, which he’s not wrong about, but also echos things we were saying about Lamar Jackson as he started to build his MVP campaign.

It feels like a distant memory that Murray was considering playing baseball. That was just two years ago. Imagine living in that alternate reality where Murray isn’t doing all of these amazing things we’re getting to watch him do and is instead doing nothing at all because baseball isn’t having a minor league season this year. It’s one of the only things about 2020 we wouldn’t change.

Murray can absolutely win MVP this year, and to say otherwise is to do exactly what we all did when questions about whether he should be the top pick were being raised. No one has won the award after two weeks, and other stars like Russell Wilson and Patrick Mahomes look unstoppable right now (with Aaron Rodgers and Lamar Jackson not far behind). But just like how Spider-Man was a late addition to the Avengers movies, Murray is announcing himself as a member of this next generation of great quarterbacks and he’s ready to do damage.

There is no bottom to how bad Bill O’Brien is at his job

It’s incredibly hard to be good enough at coaching football to become a head coach in the NFL. But every profession has people that are the worst at what they do and perhaps no one is worse at being good than Bill O’Brien.

Matt Patricia and Adam Gase are the worst coaches in football but they coach teams that are truly awful. Where O’Brien is unique is that he coaches one of the best quarterbacks in the league and his team consistently makes the playoffs.

But the reason the good times stop rolling there is specifically because of O’Brien. Each week he’s good for a boneheaded decision and this week we were gifted this doozy:

What you just saw was not a glitch in The Matrix, it was a professional head coach going for it on 4th and 1 from his own 34-yard line in the first quarter of a game that had not yet gotten out of hand yet.

Baltimore scored four plays later and went on to score six more times.

If this seems familiar, it’s because O’Brien has a way of doing this. His calling for a fake punt while up 24-0 against the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Divisional Round is widely considered to be the spark that ignited a Super Bowl run — expect the team that went on it was not O’Brien’s.

This is a good time to remind everyone that Houston made O’Brien the front office decision-maker as well. You’ll be shocked to know that the person who was behind that 4th and 1 call and the person who traded De’Andre Hopkins for spare parts is the same guy.

Texans fans have to watch one of the most electric quarterbacks in the league get held back by things like this. Houston will only be as good as Bill O’Brien lets them be, and so far that’s proven to be not exactly great.

Appreciating how historic the Falcons implosion was

No team is better at blowing a fourth quarter lead in the state of Texas than the Atlanta Falcons. Three years after blowing an infamous 28-3 lead in the Super Bowl, the Falcons were back at it blowing two different variations of a lead on Sunday in Dallas.

Atlanta sprinted out to a 20-0 lead, taking advantage of three Cowboys fumbles in the first quarter. While Dallas eventually clawed its way back into the game, Atlanta held a 15-point lead with four minutes left in the game.

So, to make sure the scene is set:

• Atlanta led 20-0 before the first quarter was over
• Atlanta was up 15-points with four minutes left
• Atlanta did not turn the ball over a single time

Somehow, the Falcons did not win this game.

It’s almost impossible to illustrate just how embarrassing this loss by the Falcons was. It is, without hyperbole, a historic collapse that goes all the way back to before World War II.

Prior to the Falcons implosion on Sunday, teams were 440-0 when scoring 39 points with 0 turnovers since 1933. Leave it to Dan Quinn and company to spoil a streak so hard to break that it had lasted 87 years.

Oh, then there’s the win probability chart which is the type of art that should be hung in The Lourve.

Homer Simpson fell off a cliff with more grace than the Falcons did on Sunday.

Of course, it’s easy to dunk on the Falcons for blowing yet another lead, but don’t lose sight of the other side of this. The Dallas Cowboys were dead in the water after less than 15 minutes and it’s hard to see other versions of this team fighting back the way it did.

But instead of clapping on the sidelines, Mike McCarthy used his experience to coach the Cowboys into situations where his star players like Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott could succeed. Against literally all odds, the Cowboys never stopped fighting and it can’t be overstated how massive that is to a team’s confidence — especially one as good as Dallas.

Perhaps the most historic part of this Falcons meltdown is that we could be looking back at this moment as a turning point for what ended up being a truly special season for the Cowboys.