The Raiders' hot start and the NFL's most pleasant surprises so far

There’s been a whole lot of bad things that have happened over three weeks: Quarterbacks have gotten hurt, teams that thought they were Super Bowl caliber are actually the worst, and Case Keenum just threw for 247 yards and two touchdowns against the Birds' defense. There’s been a whole bunch of bad … So let’s get positive.

Let’s focus on some of the good things that have happened during the first three weeks of the season. Just because everything looks bleak doesn’t mean that everything stinks for everyone. After all, this is just September football; it’s only the preseason (kind of). 

Minnesota Vikings are 3-0:

If I told you that your starting quarterback was going to get knocked out in the first quarter of Week 1 and Carson Wentz was going to come in and play the next seven quarters of football, you’d probably be feeling pretty bad. If I told you that those seven quarters were going to be against divisional teams, you’d probably feel even worse. 

The Vikings were in that exact situation, but they beat the Packers in Week 1, and they beat the Bears in Week 2.

Week 3 came around, and Kyler Murray was finally able to start and finish his first football game since last October. You weren’t expecting it to be pretty, and it wasn’t … but they still won. Now they are going into Week 4 with a perfect 3-0 record. That’s tremendous, especially compared to how it looked when they went into halftime of the first game down 19-10. 

Oh, and they just traded J.J. McCarthy to the Giants, so that’s even better. 

Las Vegas Raiders are 3-0:

Did you think that the Raiders were going to be a total pile of trash all season? So did I. Turns out, every single one of us was wrong. 

Klint Kubiak might be the best new head coaching hire of the entire offseason. Kirk Cousins might be more than just a buffer quarterback. Nakobe Dean might be the free agency signing of the year. The Raiders might actually be a good football team.

Through three weeks, they have more wins than 27 other teams, so … that’s definitely not nothing. 

Leg injuries don’t linger anymore:

They did it. The sons of guns really did it. The science nerds and doctors finally figured out how to make it so leg injuries only keep players out for nine-ish months, and then they are totally good to go. 

Patrick Mahomes: Tore his ACL and LCL on Dec. 14, 2024. Looks completely unbothered as a runner. After Week 1, it looked like he might’ve had an issue pushing the ball downfield … But no, he’s totally fine doing that too.

George Kittle: Popped his Achilles on Jan. 11, 2026. He has 12 catches for 174 yards (82 is YAC) and three touchdowns. For tight ends, that’s the 11th most catches, the fifth most yards, the ninth-most YAC, and he’s tied for the most touchdowns. He looks as good a pass catcher as ever, and he still looks really physical as a blocker.

Daniel Jones: Popped his Achilles on Dec. 7, 2025. He doesn’t look quite as dynamic as he was in 2025, but that year was already an outlier for him. Still looks plenty healthy and not like Aaron Rodgers or Kirk Cousins after their Achilles injuries. 

Jahmyr Gibbs is everything you drafted him to be:

Over the past 10 years, the consensus first-overall fantasy pick has been an absolute dud more often than not. 

This year, it was Jahmyr Gibbs … and yeah, the season is early, but he’s going for it. Right now, he’s scored the second-most points (behind Jaxon Smith-Njigba), and he’s RB1 by a cool 19 total points and 6.5 points per game. He’s been nails for the first three weeks, and you have to be feeling pretty fantastic with the RB1 as your RB1.

The Browns won two games:

If you’re a Browns fan who exclusively cares about your team winning games during the month of September … Well, you had a pretty solid September. 

They beat the Buccaneers in Week 2, and the Panthers in Week 3. What are the repercussions of that? It doesn’t matter. Does this mean your quarterback, who is a bad person, is going to keep being the quarterback? Sure, but you won back-to-back games, so who cares?

Immediate results-wise, it was a good first three weeks of football for Cleveland.

Michael Penix showed some juice:

Going into Week 3, the Falcons had one last chance to keep anyone’s interest in the team … and that was a huge ask because they are (in)famously playing three-straight primetime games. 

On Thursday night in Week 3, they absolutely took it to the Green Bay Packers in Green Bay. That was all jump-started because they had real, NFL-caliber quarterback play from Michael Penix Jr. 

He was ripping the ball to his receivers and actually running the offense, which was a massive step up from what Cooper Rush was doing in the first two weeks. It was pretty cool to see because the more teams that are actually alive (especially in a division like the NFC South), the better football is as a whole.

Kenneth Walker fixed the Chiefs

This might not be a pleasant surprise because the vast majority of the football population is rooting against the Chiefs regaining any kind of power in the AFC … But it is pretty impressive that a single player can revitalize an entire offense. 

The Chiefs have been grossly lacking a run game over the past couple of seasons, and their offense has looked mostly dysfunctional because of it.  But now? Now, they’re back to being an offensive juggernaut … But not the fancy-pants Andy Reid juggernaut that we’re used to. They’re a smash-mouth, rip your guts out, and then rip your guts out some more kind of offense.

Again, for most of us, that stinks … But the spin zone is that it gives us all a bad guy to root against, so that’s nice.

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