Week 1 of the NFL season is always bound to produce some overreactions that look positively wild in hindsight. It's the nature of the beast: We spend all offseason clamoring to see new faces in new places, new teams with new coaches and who might surprise us, and then we have to extrapolate all of those conclusions from exactly one game's worth of data. Misses are bound to happen.
And sure enough, we saw some just in the early slate of Week 2 on Sunday afternoon. Just who went from hero to zero in a week's time, and who proved the preseason consensus might have been right after all? Let's dive in.
1. Aaron Rodgers
Rodgers and the new-look Pittsburgh Steelers offense drew rave reviews for their Week 1 performance against the Jets, in which they put up 34 points and threw for four touchdowns. But amid all the hype, there were concerns lurking under the hood: The Steelers averaged five yards per play, couldn't run the ball much at all and found most of their success through the air on short passes that led to YAC opportunities that didn't feel particularly sustainable.
Sure enough, the well dried up considerably in Sunday's 31-17 loss to the Seattle Seahawks. Once again the running game was non-existent, but where Rodgers' quick game led to chunk plays in Week 1, Seattle rallied to the ball and cut off Pittsburgh's water. The Steelers' leading receiver was running back Jaylen Warren; in fact, he was the only pass-catcher to tally more than 31 yards. This remains a dink-and-dunk affair without the ability to stretch defenses vertically, and while Mike Macdonald might be the coach best suited in the entire league to exploit that weakness, you can bet other teams will follow suit in the weeks to come. Rodgers' lack of vertical arm strength and Pittsburgh's lack of other receivers around DK Metcalf could loom very large.
2. Justin Fields
The other half of that Week 1 shootout between Pittsburgh and New York, Fields appeared to look like a whole new man, averaging nearly 10 yards per attempt through the air while adding 48 more yards and two scores on the ground. He was navigating the pocket, avoiding mistakes and taking what the defense gave him better than we'd ever seen before, looking like the no-doubt starter he was always expected to be coming out of Ohio State.
And then Week 2 happened. All of the old Fields bugaboos reared their heads in an ugly 30-10 loss to the Buffalo Bills, one in which he mustered almost twice as much offense rushing (49 yards) as throwing (27). He was getting impatient. He was spraying balls and missing open receivers. He was tucking and running at the first sign of trouble, which there was a ton of thanks to a ferocious Buffalo pass rush.
Of course, Week 1 was never a fully accurate portrait of Fields and this Jets team. He didn't become a whole new player overnight, and New York's rushing attack met much more resistance than it did against Pittsburgh. For now, we're still waiting on Fields to put it all together, with hopes that he can continue taking baby steps moving forward.
3. The Cowboys defense
Remember last week, when the Cowboys defense acquitted itself shockingly well in a near-upset of the defending champion Philadelphia Eagles?
How far away that feels now. Dallas escaped with a 40-37 win over the New York Giants on Sunday, but it's not one that will leave fans optimistic about this team's ability to make real noise in the NFC playoff picture. A Giants offense that was dead in the water against the Commanders in Week 1 suddenly couldn't stop generating explosives, as Russell Wilson threw for 451 yards and three scores.
Two of those scores came in the fourth quarter, when all the Cowboys needed to do was avoid letting New York receivers get behind them. Unfortunately, Trevon Diggs and Co. didn't get the memo. Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb and Brandon Aubrey eventually bailed the team out, but this does not bode well moving forward against quarterbacks who aren't pushing 40.