2024 NFL Season: Week 1 Overreactions

2024 NFL Season: Week 1 Overreactions

We are officially through one week of the 2024 NFL Season! What were our biggest Week 1 overreactions? Let’s dive into it!

Trey Daubert:

The Vikings made the right call getting out of Kirk Cousins jail.

Sam Darnold will finish higher than Cousins in fantasy. It turns out that using cap space to bring in guys like Andrew Van Ginkel makes a big difference. The Falcons will continue to stink. The Vikings are legit playoff contenders. I said all this before the start of the season but I think we’re getting more of all of this the rest of the way.

Christopher Bagdonas:

Daniel Jones should not start another game this season. 

I don’t care if it’s Tommy DeVito, Lock, or even bringing Nathan Rourke back but there is just no getting anywhere with Danny Dimes except embarrassment after embarrassment. While everyone was caught up with the final score of the Giants-Vikings game something that went under the radar was the performance of Big Blue’s O-Line. They gave up only three sacks and looked like a stark improvement over what we’ve seen in recent years. Jones couldn’t even make anything happen with more time in the pocket and it appears to be a mental thing now. His confidence is shot and he can’t even make the simple plays anymore. Just get a QB in the 2025 draft and cut him loose.

Matt Hanifan:

Deshaun Watson‘s contract may be the worst in … sports?

Deshaun Watson‘s falloff has been stark. He’s in the third year of a fully-guaranteed $230 million deal and will be on the books for $72.9 million in 2025 AND 2026, according to Spotrac. I don’t know what Cleveland can do. You can’t cut him without a monumental cap hit; you can’t trade him because there will (and should) be no market. Unless your motive is to tank–which may be the best long-term option, even though no organization will openly admit it–for either Carson Beck, Quinn Ewers or Shedeur Sanders, among others, deploying Watson shouldn’t be an option. But Cleveland’s stuck because of how many resources (draft capital, $) they invested in him.

I may have been wrong about the entire NFC South (outside of Carolina):

Admittedly, I was much higher on Atlanta than I was New Orleans, Tampa Bay or Carolina. I may be right about them over Carolina, but I may have been wrong about how that division shapes out. Kirk Cousins, coming off the most serious injury of his career, was a statue against Pittsburgh and that offense still isn’t good. To me, he didn’t look comfortable once. Maybe it will take him time to get back in the groove. Plus, he won’t have to see T.J. Watt every week. That said, as of right now, I don’t see much light at the end of the tunnel for the Falcons after just one week.

Sam Darnold, Minnesota may not be as bad as we may think

Hat tip to Kevin O’Connell, once again. It’s the Giants, but that was the best game of Sam Darnold’s life by a fair margin. He looked comfortable in the pocket, made the proper decisions with good accuracy and didn’t try to do too much. Multiple others–Aaron Jones, Harrison Phillips, Andrew Van Ginkel, Christian Darrisaw, Blake Brandal, Josh Metellus, Patrick Jones II, Harrison Smith–all deserve shoutouts, too. That was the Vikings’ first three-score win since Dec. 15, 2019.

What was your biggest Week 1 overreaction(s)? Let us know in the comments!

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