NFL Power Rankings, Week 2: Biggest risers and fallers after Week 1
26. Atlanta Falcons
The faithful fans of the Atlanta Falcons had to be excited about their new-look team for this Week 1 matchup against the Pittsburgh Steelers. The debut of Kirk Cousins, a couple of big-name new additions to the defensive side of the ball in Justin Simmons and Matthew Judon…
This had all the makings to be a special start to the year for the Falcons but they absolutely stunk up their own place against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
To be fair to Atlanta, there’s a lot of “new” going on right now and we didn’t see Kirk Cousins in the preseason as the team worked him back from his Achilles injury. Cousins has played enough football that it shouldn’t have mattered all that much, but there was more rust to be knocked off than expected.
Cousins threw a really bad interception (and actually threw two of them) against Pittsburgh as the Atlanta offense was only able to muster up 10 points. If we see more of this type of play from Cousins, the cries for Michael Penix Jr. are going to get loud.
25. New England Patriots
Well how about that? The upset of the week has got to go to the New England Patriots, right?
The Patriots, in the head coaching debut of Jerod Mayo, went into Cincinnati and got a win against Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals.
As you might have expected, the Patriots put the clamps on defensively and did just enough offensively to win the game with Jacoby Brissett starting at quarterback. And Brissett took some shots in this game, but the Patriots were able to bleed out the clock late and get a win against, a Bengals team that, frankly, looks distracted.
But this is about the Patriots. If New England is going to play spoiler throughout the course of this season, it’s likely going to look a lot like this. If this team can play strong defense and do enough offensively, that defense can help them keep a lead. The Bengals had just 224 total yards in this game against the Pats and the New England defense forced two turnovers.