NFL Week 1 surprise wins, losses, players: Lessons from Sunday - ESPN

Week 1 usually delivers a few surprises, but the shocks came before the games even started this week. By 1 p.m. ET Sunday afternoon, Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill had been briefly detained by police on his way to the game in Miami, and we would later find out that teammate Calais Campbell had also been placed in handcuffs. The contractual saga of the summer ended, as quarterback Dak Prescott inked a four-year, $240 million deal to stay with the Cowboys. We even found out that Kendrick Lamar was going to perform the halftime show at Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans in February. That's a full day before we even got to a single snap of football.

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I subsequently spent most of the day noticing things about Week 1 that were either very surprising or extremely unsurprising, and since I want to hit on as many games and stories as possible from the first Sunday of football, that seemed like a good way to approach this recap.

Ten of the 12 games from Sunday afternoon end up coming up in one section or another, although it would have been easy to add a dozen more interesting things that stood out. Let's get into the biggest storylines from Week 1:

Jump to a section:
New England's upset | Watson's terrible day
Darnold's hot streak | Prescott's new deal
Rookie QBs underwhelmed | Houston's debuts
Chicago's comeback | Pittsburgh's ugly win
Richardson's up-and-down day | Two safeties?!
Carolina's blowout | A head-scratching punt

There has been no shortage of people prepared to write off the Patriots in 2024, a list that seemingly included the Pats themselves. They traded edge rusher Matthew Judon to Atlanta before the season, and after top-five pick Drake Maye outplayed veteran quarterback Jacoby