Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson said he wants his team to be the highest scoring offense in NFL history.
Based on the season opener, it might happen.
The Bears’ offense was just as impressive as Johnson said it would be in a 59-37 road win over the Carolina Panthers on Sunday. Caleb Williams had a fantastic game, including as a runner. He had two touchdown runs. One was a 29-yarder, which tied the longest run of his career. Williams had 269 yards and two touchdowns as a passer and 65 as a rusher. The Bears rushed for 291 yards as a team.
Caleb Williams of the Chicago Bears celebrates after scoring a touchdown against the Panthers. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
(Jared C. Tilton via Getty Images)
Nearly everyone got involved as the Bears put up 552 yards and almost 60 points. Kyle Monangai had a 61-yard touchdown. He and D’Andre Swift both had at least 100 yards rushing. Williams threw touchdowns to Cole Kmet and Jahdae Walker, who are far from the Bears’ biggest stars. Everything clicked.
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The Bears went off despite a catch-less game from tight end Colston Loveland, who should still have a big season. It just wasn’t his turn Sunday.
Johnson is so confident in his offense, he went for it on his own 21-yard line in the first half. The Bears didn’t get it. The offense made sure it didn’t matter.
Still, there are some things to clean up. The Bears started with a 31-point first half. Their defense started by giving up 31 points in the first 36 minutes of the season (though 14 of those points came on short fields). The game was tied 31-31 with 9:02 left in the third quarter. You can expect a lot of Bears games to look like that this season. Bryce Young ended up with 361 passing yards and three touchdowns. And the Bears won by more than 20.
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The Bears’ offense is tremendous. Nobody questioned that coming into the season. What was in doubt was if their defense could keep up. Last season the Bears survived a mediocre defense by leading the NFL in turnover margin by a wide margin. That’s hard to replicate. But in the end, the Bears’ defense did enough to win and that’s what matters. They’ll win plenty of games in which they give up a lot of points, like Sunday.
The Bears won the NFC North last season. And from the first glance, it looks like their offense is even better. If nothing else, every Chicago game will be a wild ride.
Here are the rest of the winners and losers from Week 1 of the NFL season:
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WINNERS
Lamar Jackson: He was the first-team All-Pro quarterback in 2023 and 2024. He was hurt in 2025 and everyone seemed to forget how good he was.
Jackson is great when he’s healthy, and it didn’t take long for the Baltimore Ravens quarterback to show it. He had a 5-yard rushing touchdown to start the Ravens’ scoring, and there was a flood of it after that.
Jackson had 324 passing yards and 40 more rushing. Zay Flowers had 150 first-half receiving yards, though he left the game with a hamstring injury. Derrick Henry looked good too, with 144 rushing yards and three touchdowns. The Ravens had 31 points in the first half. They beat the Indianapolis Colts 41-23.
The Ravens need Jackson to stay healthy — and their receivers. Flowers could be a big loss. But Baltimore’s defense looked good in Jesse Minter’s first game as head coach. And, no surprise, Jackson looked like he could be an MVP candidate again.
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Josh Allen: The Houston Texans could still have the NFL’s best defense this season. Allen carved it up.
The Texans gave up their most points since the 2023 season as Allen went off in a 36-31 win. The Bills’ defense clinched the win with a strip sack of C.J. Stroud in the final seconds.
Allen gave the Bills the lead with 1:36 left with a 34-yard pass to Joshua Palmer on third-and-11. That avoided a long Tyler Bass field-goal attempt with the Bills trailing. It also came after Allen caught a break when his wild throw to the end zone was almost picked off, but dropped. Allen had 334 yards and two touchdowns, with two touchdowns rushing.
The Texans’ defense will be fine. Allen was just that good on Sunday.
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Detroit Lions, but barely: The Lions won, but they can’t be too happy about how they played. Detroit didn’t look great, but it held on to beat New Orleans, 31-30, in overtime.
The Lions forced an incompletion on a 2-point conversion as the Saints went for the win.
The Lions had only a touchdown in the first half, though the defense was doing its part. An interception and a fumble recovery early in the second half turned a 7-0 game into a 21-0 lead for Detroit. But the Saints rallied as the Lions’ defense started to get ripped apart. A touchdown from Tyler Shough to tight end Juwan Johnson in the final two minutes tied a game that the Lions once led by three touchdowns at home.
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The Lions scored first in overtime but New Orleans answered with a Noah Fant touchdown. Shough ended up with 410 passing yards and three touchdowns. The Saints went for the 2-point conversion and the win, but the Lions got the stop they needed.
Even though the Lions’ defense came up big with the one play it needed to win, it will have to be better going forward. In four days, they face Josh Allen and the Bills.
Mike McCarthy: McCarthy got the call to go home to Western Pennsylvania and lead the Pittsburgh Steelers as Mike Tomlin’s replacement as head coach. His first game was a success.
The Steelers will face tougher opponents than the Atlanta Falcons, who were down to their third quarterback in Cooper Rush because of injuries, and Pittsburgh will need to play better than it did Sunday. The game was a little too close against a depleted Falcons team, and a defensive touchdown on an interception by T.J. Watt saved the Steelers in a 20-13 victory. A win is a win and the Steelers will be happy to start 1-0.
McCarthy has a lot to live up to because Tomlin always at least dragged Pittsburgh to a .500 record when he was coach. Avoiding a loss to the Falcons is a good start.
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Ashton Jeanty: A few weeks ago, breathless reports from Raiders camp seemed like Jeanty had suffered a major injury. It turned out, he was just fine.
Jeanty had a huge game against the Miami Dolphins in the Las Vegas Raiders’ season opening win, which is the first win of Klint Kubiak’s head-coaching career. Jeanty, who suffered an ankle injury on Aug. 23, looked perfectly healthy. He had 102 rushing yards and 45 yards receiving. He scored a pair of touchdowns in the Raiders’ 27-13 win over the Miami Dolphins.
Jeanty was the sixth overall pick of last year’s NFL Draft and did not have a great rookie season. The Raiders’ team around him was an absolute mess, however. The Raiders upgraded over the offseason, on the offensive line, at quarterback and at head coach too. It doesn’t look like Jeanty will have a disappointing second season.
Mike LaFleur: The Arizona Cardinals had a suspect roster and a schedule projected to be the toughest in the NFL this season. It was worth wondering when LaFleur, a rookie head coach, would get his first win.
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He got it right away. The Cardinals pulled off a huge Week 1 upset, knocking off the Los Angeles Chargers 26-14. They outplayed a Chargers team that looked surprisingly unprepared for the season opener.
The Cardinals still are unlikely to win many games. Arizona beating the Chargers could end up like the Raiders beating the Patriots last season, as a Week 1 result that looks baffling the rest of the season. But for at least one week, LaFleur deserves to celebrate win No. 1.
LOSERS
Matt LaFleur: The Green Bay Packers led 22-10, facing a Minnesota Vikings team that lost Kyler Murray to an injury on the first drive of the game.
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And the Packers ended up losing by double digits. The Vikings outscored Green Bay 22-0 in the fourth quarter for a 39-22 victory.
It was a bad loss for the Packers and LaFleur, who came into the season with some issues like Josh Jacobs being on the commissioner’s exempt list and Micah Parsons starting the season on the PUP list. It looked good early on, as Jordan Love hit Christian Watson on a pair or touchdowns. Then it started to go south early in the fourth quarter when LaFleur took a field goal off the board because of a Vikings offsides penalty, but couldn’t pick up a first down on fourth-and-1. The Packers led 22-17 at that point and it was all Vikings after that. Love had two fourth-quarter turnovers, a fumble and an interception. Justin Jefferson’s second touchdown of the game put the win on ice.
The Packers have a tough schedule in a competitive division. They will regret letting Sunday’s game get away from them.
Jayden Daniels: If you happened to catch any of the Washington Commanders’ opener, you likely caught a look at Jayden Daniels scrambling around, desperate to avoid the Philadelphia Eagles’ pass rush and find any receiver downfield.
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The Commanders couldn’t protect Daniels, and even when they gave him a little time, there was nobody open and he invited the pass rush by holding the ball. On Daniels’ first 15 dropbacks he was pressured 11 times.
When Daniels did warm up in the second half, it wasn’t enough as the Eagles held on for a 24-22 win. In the fourth quarter Stefon Diggs scored but jumped on the goal post, which is a 15-yard penalty. The Commanders kicked an extra point instead of going for a game-tying two-point conversion. That mattered later. When the Commanders scored with 1:01 to go to cut Philadelphia’s lead to 24-22, the two-point conversion was unsuccessful.
Daniels is coming off an injury filled season and didn’t look great on Sunday. He threw for 164 yards and rushed for 31. Daniels didn’t play well but it’s hard to assign all the blame to him. Washington didn’t do much to help him out his offseason, and losing left tackle Laremy Tunsil to an injury in August was a big blow. But this is the hand the Commanders were dealt, and now Daniels has to overcome it.
Bumbling Buccaneers: The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were one of the NFL’s worst teams in the NFL over the second half of last season. They lost seven of eight games after their bye before winning the regular-season finale, but it wasn’t enough to win the NFC South, one of five divisions in NFL history to have a champion with a losing record.
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The bad vibes continued Sunday. The Cincinnati Bengals took advantage of many Buccaneers mistakes in a 33-27 win. Their first touchdown came when Myles Murphy stripped Baker Mayfield and Bengals linebacker Demetrius Knight Jr. scooped the fumble and scored. Three of the first four Buccaneers possessions ended with a fumble, including Mayfield fumbling at the Bengals’ 4-yard line. They lost four fumbles in all, three by Mayfield.
The Buccaneers played well enough to win. Despite all those mistakes, they lost by just six points on the road. But they did make those mistakes. Just like the second half of last season.
Cam Ward: If Ward can’t have a decent outing against the New York Jets at home, is it going to happen at all this season?
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Ward’s preseason struggles carried over to the regular season. He and the Tennessee Titans looked awful in their season opener against a Jets team that was 3-14 last season. The Jets won 23-10. Ward completed 19 of 32 passes for 140 yards.
Ward came into this season with pressure to be better than last season, when he was the No. 1 overall draft pick and struggled. He largely got a pass for a horrible rookie season because he was in a bad situation. That situation improved. In the season opener, Ward didn’t.
Deshaun Watson and the Browns: Watson’s first drive of the 2026 season ended with an interception. Everyone could see that coming, except the Browns.
It doesn’t matter if Watson can get the team in and out of the huddle OK and he might know the offense better, because he is not a viable starting NFL quarterback anymore. Don’t tell the Browns that, however. They started him even though it made no sense from any angle, other than perhaps that was their way of tanking. The Browns lost 34-10 to the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 1, and it never felt that close.
The Browns trailed 24-0 at halftime of their opener. Trevor Lawrence is a real NFL quarterback and he had three touchdowns in the first half. Watson had 75 yards at halftime, 91 fewer than Lawrence. Watson finally had a nice play when he threw a deep touchdown to Denzel Boston, but it came with 1:52 left in a 34-3 game. It was a stark contrast: The Jaguars are pretty good, and the Browns can’t get out of their own way.
Just remember, the Browns voluntarily made Watson their QB1 to start the season.
