The Scoring Crash in Week 2 Hit the Quarterbacks

Caleb Williams is week-to-week after a non-contact hamstring injury in Chicago’s 9-3 loss to Minnesota. Seven days earlier the Bears had scored 59 points in Carolina. Defenses around the league spent that week with the tape and slammed the door. The part that will still be on injury reports in October is the quarterbacks.

Jayden Daniels left Dallas in a sling. Jaxson Dart lasted seven snaps on Monday night at SoFi Stadium. Minnesota is 2-0 with Carson Wentz, and the NFC North already looks like a race run on whoever is upright.

A 56-Point Drop at Soldier Field

Week 1 tied the Super Bowl-era record for an opening week, with 791 points across 16 games, 49.4 per game, matching 2012. The 13 games on that first Sunday poured in 693 points, 53.3 per game, the highest Week 1 Sunday on record. Chicago’s 59-37 win over Carolina was the loudest of them, 96 combined points, a Week 1 game record that had sat at 88 since 2018.

Sunday, September 20, was a different sport. The 13 afternoon games totaled 478 points, 36.8 per game. The Bears, coming off 59, scored a field goal. Minnesota won 9-3 on a wet field at Soldier Field. That 56-point slide from Week 1 to Week 2 is the second-largest in league history. The 1973 Falcons went from 62 points to zero.

WEEK 1 TO WEEK 2 SCORING SWINGS

New England beat Pittsburgh 20-3. Cincinnati beat Houston 20-6. Carolina, the same club that had just given up 59, beat Atlanta 34-3 and kept the Falcons out of the end zone. Seattle beat Arizona 31-7. San Francisco beat Miami 35-13 and did not allow a touchdown until late. The exception sat where it usually sits: Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City outlasted Indianapolis 33-30 in overtime.

Defenses Spent a Week With the Tape

Josh Metellus, the Vikings safety, had watched Chicago’s 59-point tape and reached a simple conclusion. “Don’t play like the Carolina Panthers,” he said. “We knew about the 60-piece, and we knew it wasn’t gonna be like that with us.” After the 9-3 game he put a league-wide feeling on it: “This week, defenses put their foot down.”

Brandon Staley, the Saints’ defensive coordinator, had a mechanical explanation while the team bus rolled to the airport. Offenses hid in the preseason. Week 1 was the ambush. Week 2 was the correction.

The advantage (for offenses) of not playing in the preseason is, you can have that ambush. Then there’s an overcorrection on our end: ‘Well, we know what their identity is now.’

Brandon Staley, Saints defensive coordinator

New Orleans had given up 31 to Detroit in Week 1. On Sunday the Saints beat Baltimore 24-17 on the road, and Julian Blackmon’s late interception finished it. Lamar Jackson’s new-look offense, 41 points against Indianapolis a week earlier, spent the second half running into disguised coverage and a rush plan built to keep him in the pocket. Denver, six days after a 31-10 loss to Kansas City, beat Jacksonville 20-13. The correction was not a mystery. It was a week of film.

The Bears Call It Week to Week

Williams went down on a first-and-goal scramble from the 6, trailing 6-3, rolling left and pulling up without being touched. Metellus was closing with linebacker Blake Cashman. “I probably had the best view, he was looking at me dead in the eye when he went down,” Metellus said. Williams could not put weight on the right leg and left on a cart with a towel over his head. He later walked through the locker room with a slight limp.

He had completed 15 of 26 passes for 138 yards and one interception, and he had rushed five times for 42 yards. The outing snapped an eight-game streak of at least two touchdown passes. Tyson Bagent finished 5 of 9 for 54 yards. One drive died on a blocked field goal. Another reached the Minnesota 12 before a sack ended the night.

Coach Ben Johnson said Monday the MRI was “somewhat encouraging” and labeled Williams week-to-week with a right hamstring. He does not expect Williams to practice before the Eagles visit on Monday, September 28, and he would not put a date on the return. “It sounds like it’s gonna be a week-to-week deal for him,” Johnson said on ESPN 1000, “but will likely miss some time.” He also said Williams “gets back a lot faster than what people can anticipate.”

Williams has started all 36 games since the Bears took him No. 1 overall in 2024, the first Chicago quarterback to start every game in back-to-back seasons since the schedule went to 16 games in 1978. If he sits, Bagent starts. Johnson has a year and a half of practice reps with him and pointed to Bagent’s two wins in four starts as an undrafted rookie in 2023. A mild hamstring still takes the scramble off the table, which is the thing Chicago used to open this season, and the cart-off clip will follow Williams longer than the MRI will.

Jayden Daniels Hurt the Same Elbow Again

In Arlington, Daniels dislocated his left elbow again on the last play of the first half of a 37-20 loss to Dallas. Washington had third-and-goal from the 1 with three seconds left, down 17-10. Daniels took the snap under center, left guard Chris Paul stepped on his foot, and Daniels put the left arm down to catch himself. The elbow bent the wrong way. He still flung the ball toward the line. X-rays at AT&T Stadium showed no fracture. He left in a sling.

He was 11 of 17 for 96 yards and a touchdown, with 69 yards on seven carries. Marcus Mariota went 11 of 16 for 111 yards and a touchdown after halftime. Coach Dan Quinn said Daniels will miss the Week 3 home game against Seattle. Imaging on Monday was followed by specialist visits scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, with the next public update likely Thursday or Friday.

Man, are we bummed for him. He was really playing his ass off. We will rally so hard around Marcus (Mariota) until Jayden’s back.

Dan Quinn, Commanders head coach, after the Cowboys game

Quinn said he did not regret going for the touchdown. “I thought looking back on it, at the 1-yard line, we need touchdowns,” he said. The same elbow went out on November 2, 2025, against Seattle. Daniels missed the next three weeks, came back, and aggravated it against Minnesota. Fox analyst Tom Brady swore on the air when the joint gave way. Washington is 0-2, and the contract year everyone around that building has been counting toward just got longer.

A Third Young Quarterback Goes Down

Monday night was supposed to be the Giants’ hangover-proof follow-up to a 28-20 Week 1 win in Dallas. Dart, in his second season, had gone 23 of 29 for 230 yards and three touchdowns in that debut under John Harbaugh. On the first drive at SoFi he faced third-and-8, threw, and got sandwiched by Byron Young and Josaiah Stewart. The left knee buckled. He walked off limping, tried to go back in, and the staff stopped him.

Harbaugh said the injury sat in the neighborhood of a sprained MCL. X-rays were negative. An MRI was set for Tuesday, September 22. General manager Joe Schoen said at halftime, “He’s going to be OK.” Dart is expected to miss some time. Jameis Winston went 11 of 27 for 111 yards with an interception. The Giants managed 182 yards. The Rams had 481, and Stafford threw four touchdown passes, two of them to Davante Adams, who caught eight balls for 195 yards in a 28-6 win that evened Los Angeles at 1-1.

THREE QUARTERBACKS IN TWO NIGHTS

1. September 20, fourth quarter: Williams pulls up on a non-contact scramble from the 6 at Soldier Field and leaves a 9-3 game on a cart.
2. September 20, end of the first half: Daniels dislocates the left elbow on third-and-goal at Dallas and does not return.
3. September 21, first drive: Dart’s left knee gives on a high-low hit at SoFi, and Winston plays the rest of a 28-6 loss.

None of those plays was a schematic lesson from Week 1 tape. One was a wet-field hamstring, one was a teammate’s foot, one was a clean hit on a young quarterback who had just thrown. They still landed in the same 24-hour window as the scoring crash, which is why the defensive bounce-back is only half of what Week 2 did.

Minnesota Leads the North With a Backup

The Vikings have played almost the entire season with Wentz after Kyler Murray’s concussion in Week 1 against Green Bay. They are 2-0. Chicago, Green Bay, and Detroit sit at 1-1. Brian Flores’ defense just held a 59-point offense to a field goal. That is the North, two weeks in: the club with the backup has the lead, and the club with the 59-point tape is waiting on a hamstring.

Elsewhere, first-year coaches cashed results that will travel. Las Vegas beat the Chargers 26-14 on the road and is 2-0 under Klint Kubiak, one win shy of matching last season’s total with 15 games left. In Tampa, Deshaun Watson threw a go-ahead score to Blake Whiteheart with 3:51 remaining, the Browns waited out a two-hour, 11-minute weather delay, then stopped Tampa Bay on second-and-4 from the Cleveland 28. Todd Monken, in his first win as a head coach, told reporters his players had taken the old “Browns are gonna Browns” line to heart.

Green Bay, which had blown double-digit second-half leads three times in its previous five games, trailed the Jets 17-7 with 11:04 left and won 20-17 in overtime. Philadelphia went to 2-0 on a Jalen Hurts touchdown pass to Darius Cooper with nine seconds left in Nashville, 24-20. Nick Sirianni is 15-4 in September and 36-14 in one-score games. The Eagles draw the Bears at Soldier Field on September 28, with Williams a spectator unless that hamstring moves faster than Johnson will promise. Ja’Marr Chase still found a 32-yard touchdown against Derek Stingley Jr. in Cincinnati’s 20-6 win, because not every skill player got the memo about the famine.

THE EIGHT TEAMS AT 2-0

• AFC East: Buffalo, after a 41-31 Thursday win over Detroit.
• AFC North: Cincinnati, after holding Houston to six.
• AFC West: Kansas City and Las Vegas, both 2-0, with the Chargers 0-2.
• NFC East: Philadelphia, last-second in Nashville.
• NFC North: Minnesota, with Wentz, after 9-3 in Chicago.
• NFC West: Seattle and San Francisco, both by multiple scores.

That list is the standings. The injury report is the other table, and it has more names than it did on Saturday.

Atlanta Hands the Job to Penix

The Falcons are 0-2 and have scored 16 points, 13 in a Week 1 loss to Pittsburgh and 3 against Carolina. They are the only offense that has not reached the red zone. Cooper Rush completed 56.4 percent for 229 yards and four interceptions in two starts. Against Carolina he went 10 of 17 for 86 yards with two picks before undrafted Jack Strand entered and threw a pick-six to Devin Lloyd on his first pass.

Michael Penix Jr. will start Thursday night at Green Bay, the club announced Monday. It is his first start since a season-ending knee injury last November. He was a full participant in Monday’s practice. Tua Tagovailoa, signed in March and named the Week 1 starter before an oblique injury, is “getting better,” coach Kevin Stefanski said, with no promise he will be active at Lambeau. Penix was not cleared for full work until August 22. Atlanta waited anyway, then watched Rush and Strand put 16 points on the board in two games, and now a short week in Green Bay is the first live look at whether the 2024 first-rounder is still the answer.

Thursday is Penix in a hostile home opener. Monday, September 28, is Chicago and Philadelphia, with Bagent on the clock unless Williams is further along than a week-to-week hamstring usually allows. Dart’s MRI was the first piece of paper Tuesday was supposed to produce. The scoring crash was the easy thing to see on Sunday. The quarterbacks are the part that does not reset in seven days.