Inside the 5: Patrick Mahomes is here, Falcons letdowns and more Week 1

It came, it went, NFL Week 1 is officially in the books. After taking in the first 16 games of the 2018 regular season, what are some of the big takeaways.

Was NFL Week 1 everything that you’d hoped it would be? If you’re a fan of Nathan Peterman and the Buffalo Bills, I’m sure that the answer there is probably no. However, for NFL fans as a majority, seeing the 2018 regular season actually get underway was surely a relief. Even if your favorite team was a bit lackluster, there are still 15 more games and 16 more weeks ahead to turn that around.

With the start of the new season, I’m going to begin something that will continue after every week of the regular season. I will be looking throughout the league at all 32 teams and delving into five of the biggest narratives and stories worth following — or at least five that I find interesting and worth discussing, whichever way you want to see that.

In the interest of this, I won’t be talking about the Bills and what could be a catastrophic 2018 NFL season for them, or even Ryan Fitzpatrick’s lightning-striking performance for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as I’ve already done so. Call it resisting belaboring points.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s start with the red-headband wearing second-year quarterback who, depending on who you ask, might as well go ahead and make an appointment with the bust sculptors in Canton.

The Patrick Mahomes hype train will not be stopped, until it is

Big plays, 38 points, swagger — these were all on the docket for the not-actually-but-really-kind-of debut of Patrick Mahomes as the starting quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs. Going on the road against the division rival Los Angeles Chargers in Week 1 in his first start as the unquestioned leader of the offense, the second-year quarterback did nothing but impress. Mahomes finished Week 1 going 15-of-27 for 256 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions, adding 21 rushing yards too, because why not.

After this performance and the 38-28 win over the Chargers that it led to, everyone has been anointing Mahomes as the next great thing in the NFL. He certainly showed flashes of that throughout the game, helping utilize Tyreek Hill’s incredible speed to break the game open and making several moments of magic happen. At minimum, it does indeed appear that Mahomes is on track to being a high-quality NFL quarterback.

However, should we possibly pump the breaks on the hype train after just one week? Especially given the scenario and looking at the full scope of his performance, my answer is yes.

Mahomes was great. However, it’s worth noting that he was facing a Chargers defense that was missing Joey Bosa, definitively their best pass rusher. Thus, he wasn’t exactly feeling the heat all that often in his Week 1 start. Moreover, let’s also not forget that the Chiefs signal-caller may have had four touchdowns, but two were only that in name as they came on little shovel passes that could just as easily have been deemed hand-offs and rushing scores.

To be clear, I believe in Mahomes. I think he’s the real deal and is going to stick around as a star in this league for years to come. But to everyone talking about him like he’s heaven’s gift to quarterbacking, let’s maybe wait and see him in more than one situation and game before we start making lofty declarations.

Shed a tear for the Tennessee Titans

Watching the Tennessee Titans in Week 1 was akin to watching a video explaining Murphy’s Law. There were extreme weather delays due to lightning in Miami, there were bad calls that called back touchdowns and, most unfortunately, there were a litany of injuries that put the Titans in a bad spot. As you might expect with all of this, they suffered defeat at the hands of the Miami Dolphins.

By now, we all know about the injury to Delanie Walker that was both gruesome and ended his 2018 season. That’s a tough blow for the team considering what a significant role the veteran tight end has and would’ve continued to play in the offense. However, there were also injuries to star left tackle Taylor Lewan (concussion) and quarterback Marcus Mariota (arm/hand) that further limited the Tennessee offense.

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With the arrival of new head coach Mike Vrabel and new offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur, I — among many others — hoped that we’d see a much-improved, much more exciting brand of Titans football. Circumstances were so that such things never had a chance to come to fruition. And with these early injuries on top of that, this was a horrid start to 2018. As someone who put plenty of stock in this team, however, let’s hope this isn’t a sign of things to come.

We’re going to be let down by the Falcons again, aren’t we?

The critics of Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian in his first season last year were not quiet. Part of that was surely the contrast between the offense under his watch to the unit with Kyle Shanahan at the helm before him. However, it was also simply that this Falcons offense always seemed to be ignoring the obvious to try and force an agenda, thus resulting in lackluster performances.

After a full season of this, though, the hope was that Sarkisian would turn things around and get an offense that’s loaded with weapons at least closer to what they were in 2016 when they came tantalizingly close to winning the Super Bowl. With what we saw last Thursday night in the NFL Kickoff game, that might be entirely too optimistic.

Whether it was force-feeding Julio Jones, not giving Devonta Freeman or Tevin Coleman enough work or just simply the play-calling in the red zone, it was another awful night for the Falcons offense, one that yielded only 12 points for the Dirty Birds. And once again, everyone is ready to fire Sarkisian on the spot — and really, based on performance, there’s merit to that train of that.

What’s worse now, however, is that the Falcons are now down two of their best defensive players, Keanu Neal and Deion Jones. Neal will miss the remainder of 2018 while Jones’ timetable is indefinite, but he’ll be out a while. When you couple that with the continuing offensive issues under Sark, things look troublesome in the ATL.

Jon Gruden’s Raiders are as disastrous as they could possibly be

For those NFL fans with eyes and ears, the new Jon Gruden era with the Oakland Raiders always had an air of being fool’s gold. That was the case when they hired a man who hadn’t coached in more than a decade, when he got up on the podium and talked about 1998 and all the way up until the point that he traded away Khalil Mack, the team’s best player.

However, there was always still hope that, once the games started mattering, Gruden would wave his wand beneath his visor and make some magic happen in Oakland.

For at least two quarters, that seemed like it might be the case as the Raiders held a 13-10 lead over the Los Angeles Rams at halftime. But then everything came to a head. Derek Carr and the offense all but fell completely apart, the defense had no answers, and the result was 23 unanswered points by the Rams to result in a blowout win for Los Angeles.

If there was going to be any hope for Gruden’s Raiders, especially in the wake of the senseless Mack trade, it was going to rest with Carr and the offense. But even that looked out of sorts when it mattered. Subsequently, Oakland has to be looking on in despair. It’d be great to say things will turn around, but there are truly no signs of that at this point.

Falling victim to Aaron Rodgers shouldn’t kill Bears optimism

Many times throughout this week already in reaction to Week 1, it’s been said that the Chicago Bears choked away their Sunday Night Football matchup against the Green Bay Packers. There is some truth to that, as they were up 20-0, did start playing not to lose and allowed Aaron Rodgers to dice them up on a bum leg. Having said that, I don’t think anything about what happened to the Bears should discourage fans in Chicago all too much.

There are three big reasons for that, both of which come from the second half. First among them is the fact that Khalil Mack didn’t see a great deal of action after halftime. When you consider that he might’ve been the single most impactful player on the Bears roster through the first two quarters, that undoubtedly matters. Had he not been on a “pitch count”, Rodgers would have had at least a more difficult time orchestrating a comeback.

Beyond that, let’s not forget that this is also Rodgers. Put simply, this is kind of what he does. If you leave the door open for him at all to make late-game magic happen, he’s proven time and again that he’s capable of wizardry.

Lastly, in regards to leaving the door open for Rodgers, Matt Nagy’s Bears are not a team that is all that experienced nor are they accustomed to success. It’s cliché, but teams in the NFL have to learn how to win and, after the John Fox era, that’s something they’re still learning. They were in position to make it happen, but let off the throttle and paid for it. In my eyes, that makes Week 1 a tough loss, but also a valuable learning experience that the Bears can benefit from moving forward.