Week 3 of the 2025 NFL season featured some really good games, but it also featured a few stinkers that should have the losing team feeling really bad about where they're at. A 30-0 shutout loss to Bryce Young? Yikes!
Some losing teams just happened to end up on the wrong end of a close game, though, with no real reason to think those teams can't just bounce back next week and get back to their winning ways.
Let's look at three teams who should be worried about their Week 3 loss and two teams that just need to shake it off and keep moving along.
The Houston Texans are in deep trouble
Is it too early to declare that the two-time defending AFC South champions won't make it three in a row? Because Sunday's loss to Jacksonville has dropped the Texans to 0-3 on the year, putting them three games back of the Colts already. It looks like Houston is heading for one of those lost Texans seasons that seem to happen every so often, right at a time when the hype around the DeMeco Ryans and C.J. Stroud pairing made it feel like the team would avoid falling into that trap again.
Sunday's loss isn't just concerning because of how it continued to weaken Houston's playoff chances, though. A larger concern here is that the Texans offense looks awful in 2025 in such a way that it's hard to see how things get fixed.
The playcalling is bad. Stroud looks lost. The offensive line can't create a clean pocket. Joe Mixon is still out. Houston's issues are too deep to just fix on the fly, and after Sunday, you can make a strong argument that this is the NFL's most disappointing team.
Dallas Cowboys are tumbling toward rock bottom
We knew that the Cowboys defense would take a hit after trading Micah Parsons, but I don't think anyone expected things would be this bad.
The Week 1 loss to the Eagles actually felt like a pretty competitive showing on both sides of the ball, but the defense just vanished in the Week 2 win over the Giants. Sure, the Cowboys offense did enough to win the game, but Dallas allowed Russell Wilson to throw for 450 yards in the game. Wilson, who's appeared to be at least moderately washed for a few years now, threw for 450 yards against Dallas. Two weeks later, he's been benched for his poor overall play.
How did the Dallas defense follow that one up? By allowing Caleb Williams to throw for 298 yards and four touchdowns in a 31-14 loss to the Bears. It was the fifth-most yards Williams has thrown for in a game and tied for his most touchdown passes.
If the Cowboys can't stop Wilson and Williams, how will they stop Jordan Love this week? The only good news is that Dallas doesn't really face a ton of the league's top quarterbacks this season, so maybe the offense can survive enough shootouts to sneak into a wild-card spot.
Atlanta Falcons have a long way to go
The Falcons losing to the Panthers isn't a shocking result, but the way that Atlanta lost was as the Panthers dominated from the jump, winning 30-0 and just absolutely clobbering Falcons quarterback Michael Penix Jr.
For the second week in a row, Penix failed to throw a touchdown pass. It didn't matter against the Vikings because the run game controlled the pace of the contest, but against Carolina, the team needed its second-year quarterback to step up.
Instead, he was 18-for-36 for 172 yards with two interceptions. He wasn't sacked, but that's little solace on a day where the Falcons couldn't buy a point.
Three games into the season and the 1-2 Falcons have major question marks at the most important position. Could the team make a panic move and bench Penix for Kirk Cousins? You'd like to think they wouldn't do something like that since it would pretty much kill any confidence Penix has, but it's within the realm of possibilities after the disastrous loss.
The Ravens will be fine in the end
The Ravens should feel a little frustrated with how their defense played against the Lions on Monday night, but I'm a pretty firm believer that what we saw said more about Detroit than it did about Baltimore.
Were there things that the Ravens needed to clean up? Sure, and the biggest of those is that the team has to get Derrick Henry's fumbling issues under control. He had three fumbles last season, but already has equaled that through the first three weeks of the season.
But aside from that, Lamar Jackson is still throwing the ball well, and the defense played well the one time that Baltimore played a non-elite team. You don't want to get into weekly shootouts, especially since you're 0-2 this year in those shootouts, but Baltimore is still in a pretty okay spot.
The Rams can be patient
Losing is never good, but the Rams lost in such a fluky way on Sunday that the team can't really do anything but hold its head high and move on.
Los Angeles had a shot at the win as time expired, with kicker Joshua Karty lined up for a 44-yard field goal that would have given the Rams the victory. Instead, defensive tackle Jordan Davis burst through the line to block the kick, the second time in the game that a Karty field goal attempt was blocked. Davis then boogied his way to the end zone for six.
Sure, the Rams need to work on special teams blocking, but losing this game because of multiple blocked kicks just feels like such a random way to lose a football game. I'm probably about to jinx this, but there's no way the Rams lose more games in this exact way. The team was two fluke special teams plays away from being 3-0 with a win over the defending Super Bowl champions.