Why Did NFL Offenses Struggle So Much in Week 1?

By Scott Kacsmar

The NFL’s 2023 season officially has a full week in the books. However, the fans who were craving big offensive numbers, the fantasy managers who expected more points, and the bettors who took the over on totals and props all had to share some major disappointment after a lackluster Week 1 around the league.

Unless you only cared about the Dolphins-Chargers shootout, Week 1 was an offensive dud in a way we have not seen in some time in the NFL:

• The average of 41.0 total points per game is the fewest in Week 1 since 2017 (40.4), a season notorious for injured quarterbacks, and the second-lowest Week 1 in the last 13 years.
• Dolphins-Chargers was the only game where both teams scored more than 21 points (36-34).
• The 2008 season was the last Week 1 where only one game had both teams score more than 21 points, and that also involved the Chargers losing at home by 2 points (26-24 to the Panthers).
• Teams averaged 194.5 net passing yards per game, the fewest in Week 1 since 2006 (189.3), and the fifth lowest in any week of the last 13 seasons since the 2011 kickoff rule change created worse average starting field position.
• For the first time since 2008, we had a week where 19 teams failed to reach 200 net passing yards, which is simply passing yards with sack yardage subtracted.
• Four teams (Giants, Falcons, Bengals, and Seahawks) failed to reach 100 net passing yards, which had not happened in Week 1 since the 1987 season.
• According to ESPN’s QBR metric where 50.0 is considered average, there were 12 quarterbacks in Week 1 who finished with a QBR under 30.0, an amount that doubles or triples the totals in Week 1 in 2019-22.

In addition to the low scores, the AFC’s top three contenders based on preseason Super Bowl odds (Chiefs, Bengals, and Bills) all lost in Week 1. That had not happened to a conference’s top three favorites in Week 1 since the 1982 NFC when the Cowboys (+400), 49ers (+500), and Rams (+700) all lost in what became a 9-game strike season. None of them made it to the Super Bowl that year, which was won by Washington.

What happened to these offenses in Week 1, and can we expect defenses to continue dominating in this 2023 season?

Big-Name Injuries

Even before the devastating, season-ending Achilles injury for Aaron Rodgers, just 4 snaps into his Jets debut on Monday night, Week 1 was already hampered by a lot of big-name offensive players either out with injury, injured during the game, or not playing at 100% because of an injury.

You usually count on a clean bill of health for players at the beginning of the season, but sometimes there are injuries in training camp or the preseason, or even something lingering from last season like Kyler Murray’s ACL recovery in Arizona.

Here were some of the key offensive players affected by health in Week 1:

• TE Travis Kelce, Chiefs: A surprise Tuesday practice injury kept Kelce out of the season opener, and the Chiefs sure missed him as the wide receivers dropped too many big places in his absence.
• TE Mark Andrews, Ravens: A rough week for tight ends, Lamar Jackson, who did not throw a touchdown, was missing his No. 1 weapon, but at least rookie Zay Flowers stepped up in the team’s comfortable win. Unfortunately, the Ravens lost top running back J.K. Dobbins for the season with a torn Achilles.
• WR Jerry Jeudy, Broncos: This game had better offense than the 17-16 score indicated, but Russell Wilson was missing the wide receiver he had his best chemistry with by far in 2022. The Broncos did not have a play gain of more than 21 yards in the loss.
• WR Cooper Kupp, Rams: Matthew Stafford had a great game against Seattle without Kupp, but he is still one of the best in the game and his hamstring injury is going to keep him out at least 4 games.
• WR Christian Watson, Packers: Green Bay looked good without its No. 1 receiver and big-play threat, but Watson was one of a handful of No. 1 targets in an offense’s passing game not available in Week 1.
• QB Kyler Murray, Cardinals: Hard to say when he will be back, but Joshua Dobbs struggled in his debut for Arizona, barely eclipsing 4.0 yards per pass attempt.
• RB Jonathan Taylor, Colts: It would be nice to see Indy work things out with their star back, because backup Deon Jackson just had one of the worst games ever with 28 yards on 18 touches and 2 lost fumbles against Jacksonville.
• WR DJ Chark, Panthers: Replacing D.J. Moore will be tough, but not having Chark only made it tougher on rookie Bryce Young in his debut. He threw 38 passes and none of them gained more than 14 yards against Atlanta.
• QB Aaron Rodgers, Jets: Obviously New York planned its season around Rodgers, but that dream is over after a torn Achilles for the 39-year-old legend, a huge loss for all fans in the 2023 season.

Finally, a player like Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow suffered a calf injury in July and missed most of training camp and the preseason. He had arguably the worst game of his career in a 24-3 loss to the Browns where he passed for just 82 yards.

Kansas City wide receiver Kadarius Toney was injured on the first day of camp and had surgery, causing him to miss time. He did more than anyone to lose that game against Detroit with multiple drops, including one that turned into a pick-six and a drop in game-winning field goal range.

Health is always the most important thing for players, but the lack of practice time lost from being injured also cannot be ignored.

Lack of Preseason Playing Time?

This may be something that the data will never be clear on either way, but there is a thought that not playing your starters in the preseason is going to lead to sloppy, rusty performances in Week 1. The NFL only has 3 preseason games instead of 4 now, and we see many teams barely play their starters at all in them.

Eagles coach Nick Sirianni was someone who came out and said he would reevaluate his team’s preseason approach next year after the Eagles nearly gave away a 16-point lead in New England on Sunday.

Of course, the counterpoint to this is the Pittsburgh offense scored 5 touchdowns on 5 drives with starters in the preseason, then managed just one scoring drive in a 30-7 loss at home to the 49ers, the biggest home loss of Mike Tomlin’s career.

Fortunately, this is a topic that is put to bed come Week 2 every year. Every team has a real 60-minute game under their belt now.

The Weather: I Can’t Stand the Rain

For the Eagles, you could even argue their 16-0 lead was a bit of fool’s gold in New England as the rain contributed heavily to those early turnovers that led to a pick-six and Ezekiel Elliott fumble by the Patriots, who usually are prepared for the elements.

It was just like a game last year against Jacksonville in the rain where some bad bounces put the Eagles behind two touchdowns before they rallied to win.

While none of the Week 1 games had a monsoon-like the Bears’ 19-10 upset of the 49ers in Week 1 last year, there were some rain games where the wet conditions did not help the offensive performances.

It rained in Bengals-Browns, Eagles-Patriots, and of course, Cowboys-Giants was a mess in the rain on Sunday night when New York self-destructed in a 40-0 loss. Many even believe the MetLife Stadium field getting soaked by rain for a day led to Aaron Rodgers’ torn Achilles on Monday night. It is a field notorious for ruining careers, and they apparently have more rubber pellets on the surface this year as we saw in the last two games.

The weather sometimes is a factor, but teams just have to learn to deal with it. The Browns, Eagles, and Cowboys just so happened to handle it much better than the Bengals, Patriots, and Giants did.

Division Games: Familiarity Breeds Contempt

Something that may have been overlooked was that half of the Week 1 schedule was division games, pitting teams who know each other better than most against each other.

• While we can say with confidence that Joe Burrow stunk against Cleveland on Sunday, he is also 1-5 against the Browns now in his career, and this may be the best defense Cleveland has fielded in years.
• Before we announce the Rams are back, let’s keep in mind Sean McVay has been getting the best of Pete Carroll for years, and the Seahawks needed a pair of fourth-quarter comebacks to sweep the Rams last year without Matthew Stafford, Cooper Kupp, and Aaron Donald.
• Before we crown the Packers, let’s see them do something other than beat up the Bears, something Matt LaFleur and Aaron Jones are used to doing.
• Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott is 11-0 against the Giants since 2017.
• Everyone knows the Broncos have lost 15 games in a row to the Chiefs, but did you know they have lost all 7 meetings in the 2020s to the Raiders?
• Josh Allen played like he was trapped in hell Monday night against the Jets, a defense that has held him to 6.66 yards per attempt in his career (under 6.1 in his last 4 games against Robert Saleh’s defense).

There were as many division games in Week 1 this year as 2022 (6) and 2021 (2) combined. Having said that, there were also eight division games in Week 1 of 2011 and nine in 2020, but those seasons were very offensive early on for different reasons.

The 2011 season had the offseason lockout after a new CBA was signed, and defenses were well behind the pace of offenses. The 2020 season was the main COVID year where crowds were empty, and offenses thrived in quiet conditions.

We mentioned the 2008 season a couple of times in the intro in regard to weak offensive production. Like 2023, that was the only other season since the 2002 realignment where eight division games were played in Week 1 without a lockdown or pandemic shaking up the offseason preparation.

There are still six division games in Week 2, but it will be interesting to see what happens when the schedule shies away from familiarity.

Inexperienced Quarterbacks and New Faces in New Places

So far, we have talked about everything from injuries to preseason playing time to the weather and division games. But at the heart of the uncertainty in the 2023 NFL season is the lack of experienced and established starting quarterbacks.

Heading into Week 1, there were a whopping 15 quarterbacks who have not started more than 15 games with their current team (*asterisk denotes quarterbacks with fewer than 16 career starts in the NFL):

• Aaron Rodgers, Jets (traded in offseason)
• Deshaun Watson, Browns (traded last year)
• Kenny Pickett, Steelers*
• Anthony Richardson, Colts* (rookie)
• C.J. Stroud, Texans* (rookie)
• Jimmy Garoppolo, Raiders (new team)
• Russell Wilson, Broncos (traded last year)
• Sam Howell, Commanders*
• Jordan Love, Packers*
• Derek Carr, Saints (new team)
• Baker Mayfield, Buccaneers (new team)
• Desmond Ridder, Falcons*
• Bryce Young, Panthers*
• Brock Purdy, 49ers*
• Joshua Dobbs, Cardinals* (traded in August)

The Jets already have to go back to Zach Wilson after losing Rodgers to injury, but all of these quarterbacks were the intended starters this year except for Joshua Dobbs, who is filling in while Kyler Murray recovers. But that is almost half the league on that list.

Nine of the 32 teams have a quarterback who started Week 1 without even having 16 career starts in the NFL. That ties 2002, 2008, and 2012 for the most such starters in Week 1 in the 32-team era.

We are definitely in a transition period at the quarterback position, and Rodgers was the last player standing from the old guard. His injury may be the end of the road for him too, and this transition period may only be one great draft class (like 1983 or 2004) away from starting the next era at the position. One where Patrick Mahomes is headlining the duels with Jalen Hurts, Justin Herbert, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Tua Tagovailoa, Trevor Lawrence, Lamar Jackson, and those next great rookies (Caleb Williams?).

After Week 1, maybe we have to put Brock Purdy on that list too as someone who can be a foil to Mahomes. But Purdy is one of many quarterbacks we will learn so much about in 2023.

• We still have to find out if Purdy’s 2022 classmates Kenny Pickett and Desmond Ridder are the real deal or temporary solutions to replacing Ben Roethlisberger and Matt Ryan in Pittsburgh and Atlanta. Sam Howell is also an interesting experiment with lower stakes in Washington.
• Do the Bears and Patriots need to replace Justin Fields and Mac Jones for 2024? The disappointing 2021 class has already given up on Trey Lance and we have to see more of Zach Wilson than anyone hoped for in 2023.
• Could the Packers have struck gold again with Jordan Love following Brett Favre and Rodgers?
• Is Russell Wilson truly cooked in Denver? He could still only be 2022’s second-biggest mistake if Deshaun Watson does not improve in Cleveland.
• How long can Week 1 winners Jimmy Garoppolo, Derek Carr, and Baker Mayfield look the part on new teams before we remember why they changed teams?

Those are just some of the burning quarterback questions we have to follow for the rest of the 2023 season. It usually is not this many, but this is what happens when you have a league where so many veterans have retired and have been replaced by unproven players that we simply have to take time to learn about.

It was not that many years ago when we could go into a season and have very reasonable expectations of what Matt Ryan, Andy Dalton, Matthew Stafford, Cam Newton, Eli Manning, Philip Rivers, Jay Cutler, Ryan Tannehill, Joe Flacco, Carson Palmer, Alex Smith, and Ryan Fitzpatrick were going to do that year. Not to mention the likes of Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Russell Wilson, Andrew Luck, and Ben Roethlisberger.

Those quarterbacks made up two-thirds of the leading passers in the 2015 season. Now they are all either retired or on a different team than the one we spent years watching them play for. That experience not only helped with the product on the field, but it made it easier for us to predict what would happen.

The league has changed a lot in a short period of time, and not only are the quarterbacks lacking experience with their current team, but they are more mobile than in the last era. We see some spectacular plays with that mobility, but we also can see some bad sacks.

In Week 1 of the 2023 season, there were 86 sacks, the second most in any week in the last 4 seasons. Ten different quarterbacks, nine of them no older than 27, took at least 4 sacks this week.

The position is changing before our eyes, but there are growing pains that come with that.

Will This Be a Down Year for Offenses?

We did not even get into the running game where the teams only averaged 3.8 yards per carry in Week 1. That number has been in the 4.3-to-4.5 range in recent years for the season.

Things should perk up as it was only Week 1, but the quarterback talent distribution this year is so unique that you do have to question if this will linger for most of the year.

Younger and faster sounds nice but experience matters too. Experience in the same system is even better. Right now, the league has a lot of inexperienced quarterbacks, and it does feel like there is a good possibility that this season will see a decrease in statistics similar to 2017.

The 2020 COVID season set unrealistic standards for how good offense should be in the NFL. The numbers were always going to regress to the mean from there, but if things do stay at the level we saw in Week 1, it would be the third year in a row where scoring has dropped by at least a full point, a 3-year run that has never happened in the NFL since the 1970 merger.

Something to keep in mind the next time you load up a Same Game Parlay with a bunch of touchdown scorers this year. Let these young quarterbacks prove they can do it first. The elite teams, including Buffalo and Cincinnati, should be fine after Week 1 hiccups. But when you get multiple games between Daniel Jones and Sam Howell this season, it could be a very long year for fans of the teams who are in the “have-nots” bucket at the quarterback position.