On Thursday, September 5th at 8 PM, I sat on my couch excited for the newest season of football to begin. What other way can you start the 100th NFL season then by having the game’s longest and best rivalry, the Chicago Bears vs the Green Bay Packers. The game however, was a little bit of a let down. I was expecting a lot of scoring and the game to come down to the final play. Instead I get a final score of 10-3 Green Bay.
Now it is Sunday which features another 13 games throughout the day. The Baltimore Ravens faced off against the Miami Dolphins. I would say that the Dolphins are the worst team in the entire league this season. They are trying to tank to get University of Alabama’s star quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and then rebuild the team around him. For now though, they are trading away some of their best players like Kiko Alonso, Laremy Tunsil and Kenny Stills. The Ravens, on the other hand, have Lamar Jackson coming into his second season and they want to win now. The game was an obliteration. The final was 59-10 Ravens. It is going to be a really long season for Miami.
The next exciting game on Sunday was the New York Jets against the Buffalo Bills. This is a divisional game which means that it is super important to win. My favorite team, the Jets might have had terrible front office changes this offseason but they did add some quality talent such as Le’Veon Bell, CJ Mosely and Quinnen Williams. The Jets started the game on fire. The defense forced 4 turnovers on the first 6 possessions of the Bills and they also forced a safety. One of which was an interception that was returned for a touchdown by their new, amazing linebacker, CJ Mosely. The biggest problem for the Jets is there kicking. They have new kicker Kaare Vedvik and he missed a field goal and extra point in his only 2 attempts of the game. He was so bad they the next time that the Jets scored they went for a 2 point conversion because they didn’t trust the kicker. Late in the 3rd quarter the Jets were leading the Bills 16-0. Then, the Jets looked like the Jets that we all know and love. They let up 17 unanswered points and lost the game 17-16.
Later in the afternoon, Kyler Murray, who was last season’s Heisman Award winner and first pick in the NFL Draft, was making his debut against the Detroit Lions. The Arizona Cardinals have a new head coach this season named Kliff Kingsbury who is coaching in the NFL for the first time. He was said to be an offensive genius. His offense in the first half of the game was atrocious. It was so bad that the announcer in the middle of the game said “The offense was so bad that I’d call it garbage but that would be an insult to garbage.” In the fourth quarter, when it started to look like it was over, Kyler Murray and the offense tied it up. Larry Fitzgerald, caught the touchdown late in the game to send it into overtime. The Lions and Cardinals fought it out but in the end neither team came out victorious. This was the first tie of the season.
Fans, like myself, were lucky week 1 because there were two monday night football games. The first game on monday night was debatably the most anticipated game of the week. The New Orleans Saints played against the Houston Texans. Both teams are playoff contenders. For the Saints, they want this to be the year they win since they got so unlucky in the playoffs two years in a row. In 2017, they played against the Vikings in the divisional round. The time is running out and it looks like the Saints are moving on to be one win away from the Super Bowl. Then the Minneapolis Miracle occured. Case Keenum dropped back, threw the ball to Stefon Diggs and he scored a touchdown on the final play to win the game. The following season, the Saints are playing against the LA Rams in the NFC championship game. On a crucial play in the game that could easily send the Saints to the Super Bowl, the ref missed a super clear pass interference. This was the worst no call that I have ever seen in my life. It was so bad that they made a rule change in the offseason. As far as the Texans go, they have a very talented roster and Deshaun Watson is ready to take that step forward after his ACL is fully healed now. The game didn’t disappoint at all. The Texans get the ball down by 6 with under a minute to play. Watson throws two long passes and they score a touchdown to take the lead with 39 seconds to go. There was one problem, they are against one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time and he has 39 seconds to play with. Down by one, Drew Brees does exactly what he needed to do and set up the kicker, Will Lutz with a 58 yard field goal for the win. After missing a 57 yard field goal to end the first half, he successfully redeemed himself and makes the kick to win the game.
The first week of the NFL season wasn’t the best week I have ever seen but I was still very much entertained by it. A few games came down to the end and some were blowouts. Besides Nick Foles on the Jaguars, there weren’t any major injuries. Tom Brady looked as good as ever by destroying the Steelers. Mahomes was just as good as he left off last season. The Browns who had extremely high expectations looked terrible against the Titans. Now, us fans need to wait until next week to see the teams play again.