Week 1 of football season is in the books and Sports (And Maybe Other Things) is here to help you make sense of it.
We’ll be looking at each game from an analytical lens, leaning heavily on expected points added (EPA) and success rate (the percentage of plays that produce positive EPA), thanks to data from the indispensable nflverse.
My initial plan was to have all the games in one post, but due to time constraints, I had to break this up into multiple installments.
You can click on any game below to jump right to it.
Let’s begin!
Note that “epa_all” refers to all EPA from offensive plays.
Giants 28, Cowboys 20 (Sunday Night Football)
The numbers frankly speak for themselves here: this was a dominant performance by the Giants offense, even accounting for the porous Dallas defense.
Jaxson Dart had a terrific day through the air, completing 23-of-29 passes for 229 yards and 3 touchdowns with no interceptions and two sacks. His completion percentage over expected was 13.4% and he had a 70% success rate.
The Dallas offense hardly had a poor day itself, but it was not enough to overcome the team’s horrid performance on the other side of the ball.
Seahawks 13, Patriots 10 (Wednesday Night Football)
The game swung on two massive plays by Seattle: the first big spike was a 45-yard touchdown pass from Drew Lock to Jaxon Smith-Njigba (34% win probability added) and the second was an interception on an ill-advised Drake Maye pass that clinched the win for the Seahawks (42% win probability added).
In a game Seattle won by 3, New England lost about 8.5 expected points on three Drake Maye interceptions. Neither offense was efficient on early downs, but New England was able to stay in the game thanks in large part to a 48% success rate on late downs (while holding Seattle to 31%).
While the interceptions put a damper on his day, Drake Maye was still efficient on his dropbacks (New England had a 52% passing success rate), while New England could not get a thing going on the ground. The Patriots posted a meagre 22% rushing success rate while averaging 2.4 yards per carry.
Despite this, New England was still relatively run heavy, posting a minus-3.5% pass rate over expected.1
49ers 27, Rams 7 (Melbourne)
It was a horrid trip to Australia for the Rams offense against a defense that was below average in 2025.
San Francisco picked Los Angeles apart with short passes, as Brock Purdy only had an average depth of target of 4.4 yards. 82.4% of the 49ers’ pass attempts were under 10 yards (the NFL average is about 67%), and they had a 57% success rate on these throws (roughly 10 points higher than the league average).
Lions 31, Saints 30
The Saints lost the turnover battle, 3-1, costing them nearly 10 expected points.
The Saints passing game had nearly 21 expected points added on non-interception throws, but gave back all that value (and more) on six sacks, two interceptions and a fumble lost.
Detroit had a solid day in terms of offensive efficiency, with its running game and early-down work doing the heavy lifting. The Lions gained 163 yards on 36 designed rushes (4.5 yards per carry) with a 50% success rate. 156 of those yards came on 29 Jahmyr Gibbs carries. Gibbs also scored two rushing touchdowns and caught all 5 of his targets for an additional 30 yards through the air (though he did lose a fumble on one of these receptions).
Jameson Williams had 8.5 fantasy points,2 but had the opportunity for more; he had nine targets and a 14.1 average depth of target. Based on the volume and context of his targets (including depth and location on the field), an an average player would have been expected to score 17 PPR points. Only Pittsburgh’s DK Metcalf undershot his expectation by more.
Tyler Shough turned the ball over three times, but the Saints passing game also managed a healthy 48% success rate and six plays of at least 20 yards.
Bears 59, Panthers 37
In the preview, I wrote that I expected the Bears defense to take a major step back and Week 1 did nothing to move me off this position. However, if the Chicago offense can duplicate the performance we saw on Sunday, this regression might not matter. The Bears gained 552 yards of offense, while allowing 478.
Caleb Williams is off to a superb start in terms of addressing the accuracy issues he faced in 2025, as his 16.6% completion percentage above expectation was second highest in the league this week.
The Bears’ 40% success rate on their 35 designed runs was roughly average, but it doesn’t account for how explosive their successful runs were. Chicago averaged 6.6 yards per carry on these plays and three of them gained at least 20 yards.
Bills 36, Texans 31
This might have been a more comfortable Bills win if not for a big disparity in red zone performance: Buffalo scored one touchdown on three red zone trips while Houston was 4-for-5.
Week 1 might not have gone their way but if the Texans can sustain this kind of offensive performance, it could be a very fun year in Houston (assuming of course their defense does not sustain their Week 1 performance).
Though the Bills were only roughly average in terms of passing success rate (this could still be considered above average given the quality of their opponent), it was a 95th percentile day in terms of EPA per dropback thanks in large part to explosive plays.
Josh Allen had a 13.2 aDOT and threw 55% of his passes at least 10 yards down the field (the league average is 32.6%). He was 4-for-8 on passes of at least 20 yards, producing a whopping 12.3 EPA on these throws alone. Buffalo had six total passing plays gain at least 20 yards.
1 PROE takes a team’s rate of dropbacks and subtracts how often a model predicts an average would have dropped back considering the score, down, distance, and other factors.
2 Assuming point-per-reception scoring