How Likely Was Your Week 1 NFL Game a KRAFT BOWL?

Last year, Week 1 gave us a 20-13 Las Vegas Raiders victory over the New England Patriots. The Pete Carroll era in Vegas was off to a guns-blazing start! Geno Smith threw for over 300 yards! The Patriots, meanwhile, had competent coaching, but we’ll still see about this whole “Drake Maye” guy, and Mike Vrabel will need time to fix one of the worst rosters in the league when he signed up for the job.

Remember those conversations?

What happened afterward, you might ask? Vegas had a free fall, winning only two more games; they fired Pete Carroll; Geno Smith is now a Jet; and now we’re unsure if Ashton Jeanty is what we made him out to be. The Patriots would go on to go 14-2 before making the Super Bowl.

Don’t believe everything you see in Week 1. It is a liar, for the most part- an extension of the preseason that coaches and teams no longer want to play.

So, after our first week of games in this 17-game season marathon, which game is most likely to be the liar? We love to overreact and think we know everything now that we have actual tape, but what is going to be the game that we look back at and say, “How did that happen? Oh yeah, it happened because it was Week 1.”

This is an investigation and ranking of the likelihood of who just played in the Kraft Bowl (Robert Kraft owns the Patriots. Bowl games have ridiculous sponsorships. I can’t believe Kraft doesn’t have a Mac and Cheese Bowl in college yet.)

Seahawks 13, Patriots 10

• LIKELIHOOD: 2/10

The opening banner-night game always feels like something goes wrong. It started with Sam Darnold suffering a hip injury, New England gaining momentum in the first half, and then Drew Lock coming in and slinging the rock in the second half. The Mike Macdonald defense completely took over in the starting quarterback’s absence, rallying a comeback and sealing the win with 3 Drake Maye interceptions.

It’s quite possible the Seahawks pulled off an unlikely victory in Darnold’s absence, but both are sound operations. The Patriots weren’t nearly as dysfunctional as they were in Week 1 last season, and the offensive line will give him more protection going forward when they’re not playing the vaunted dark-side defense. Whether it’s Drew Lock, Sam Darnold, or Jalen Milroe, a Macdonald defense will always be able to compete. Nothing weird happened here. 

49ers 27, Rams 7

• LIKELIHOOD: 1/10

This was a game where the main talking points were not the play on the field, but the TRAVEL strategy. There’s really nothing to take away other than the 49ers were probably happy to play as far away from the haunted substation as possible. They all looked like the healthy 49ers team we always WISH we saw, with Trent Williams mauling the Rams defensive front and Mike Evans not looking like he’s in the twilight of his career.

Myles Garrett and Aaron Donald, I guess, didn’t travel with the team to Australia (ZING!), but they’ll both be back and hopefully healthy playing games on American soil when it matters in January.

Lions 31, Saints 30 (OT)

• LIKELIHOOD: 4/10

This game looks much closer than it did in the box score. The Saints could end up looking like the second-half team where Shough was throwing seeds all over the field, but the way that he was 10-of-22 for less than 100 yards and a pick in the first half makes it feel like this was more of a case of a Lions defense that turned off the jets in the second half.

How sustainable it is for Detroit to use Gibbs at this rate remains to be seen, but Goff has a security blanket in Amon-Ra and the secondary will get a boost by the time Branch comes back.

Bengals 33, Buccaneers 27

• LIKELIHOOD: 5/10

Do the Bengals have a defense now? Or was this just a case of early-season sloppiness where the Bucs didn’t have to punt a single time because they kept gifting the Bengals the ball with four turnovers? 

Ravens 41, Colts 23

• LIKELIHOOD: 1/10

Yeah, the Colts looked like the second half of 2026 Colts still, and it turns out Daniel Jones not having the cheat code of being able to run that made that first half so special (he had 1 rush coming back from his torn Achilles!) makes it a lot more difficult to win football games.

Unfortunately for the Ravens, they lost their first- and third-string receivers to injury in Flowers and Lane, but that’s never been a strength anyway, and it probably won’t matter if Derrick Henry still looks like 2019 Derrick Henry.

Jaguars 34, Browns 10

• LIKELIHOOD: 1/10

The Jaguars are trying to win football games this year, and the Browns are not.

Jets 23, Titans 10

• LIKELIHOOD: 3/10

This would only be a weird result if the Titans suddenly righted the ship and turned into a powerhouse. There’s not much to learn from the Jets aside from the offensive line made Breece Hall look like the man who was once going first in fantasy drafts, and they may not be the bottom of the bottom tier of teams.

Cam Ward is running out of “well, we can’t blame him because he’s in a terrible situation!” sand in the hourglass before we start thinking he’s part of the problem, too.

Bills 36, Texans 31

• LIKELIHOOD: 4/10

It’s not weird that we’ve probably got two AFC contenders that had a game come down to one possession and a turnover in a back-and-forth game decided by a turnover. It IS weird that the score was 36-31 against what many considered the best defense in the league this season. How much help does CJ Stroud need?

Steelers 20, Falcons 13

• LIKELIHOOD: 2/10

If you asked anyone to predict the final score of a Steelers-Falcons game at any point of the year, 20-13 is probably their answer.

Bears 59, Panthers 37

• LIKELIHOOD: 7/10

This one could be the incredibly strange game by the end of the season because both teams signed up for 60 minutes, but only on one side of the ball. There’s a reality where the Bears’ offense is as prolific as it was in this game, where Ben Johnson wants to break NFL records in points scored.

Still, defensive weaknesses keep them from winning the NFC North, and a Panthers team with bright spots from Jalen Coker and Chuba Hubbard still finds a way to limp into the playoffs as NFC South Champions by default. 

Vikings 39, Packers 22

• LIKELIHOOD: 9/10

Something tells me that despite how down the Packers fans are by repeating the same issues they’ve had in not putting their foot on the gas to end the game after going up 22-10, we may look back and say, “Remember that Week 1 game where Kyler Murray got concussed and Carson Wentz had to come in and stage a historic comeback?”

Even Wentz was visibly in pain after every shot he took, but the Vikings took advantage of some horrible balls from Love after facing heat from the Flores defense, and it got away in the end. It’s a division game in Minnesota, with a backup quarterback playing with nothing to lose and a Green Bay team that still has some things to figure out without Josh Jacobs and Micah Parsons in the short term.

Raiders 27, Dolphins 13

• LIKELIHOOD: 3/10

The Dolphins are also trying to do everything they can to avoid winning games, which is sort of unfair to Malik Willis trying to fight for his life and a starting job in the NFL after signing a 2-year deal there. The thing is that he DID put forth his best effort, and it still resulted in 5 sacks taken, a pick, and a Raiders victory.

Kubiak’s new regime made life easy for Kirk Cousins, who didn’t even really need to throw the ball very hard at this point in his career, and they’ll likely only improve by getting Bowers back and potentially passing the baton to see what they have in Mendoza eventually.

Cardinals 26, Chargers 14

• LIKELIHOOD: 9/10

A team with a preseason over/under of 3.5 wins came into Los Angeles and got a victory. We’re running out of excuses for Justin Herbert, the “social media” quarterback, but if there was a week for the Cardinals to get one, it’s the one where Los Angeles is figuring out the newly installed Mike McDaniel offense, where Omarion Hampton was not able to get anything going on the ground.

The Chargers have the talent to right the ship, but the schedule from weeks 3-11 is daunting. To their credit, Love looked like Adrian Peterson on the ground, and McBride caught some massive passes over Derwin James! Prove us wrong, Arizona!

Eagles 24, Commanders 22

• LIKELIHOOD: 2/10

This went about as expected from any Eagles–Commanders game we’ve seen in the past: the Eagles won in a fashion that was miserable for both their fans and the other team, which had opportunities to take advantage but never did.

Washington is likely going to have Daniels running for his life trying to make magic happen all season, and going against an operation like Philadelphia that won’t have a knuckle-headed mistake where Stefon Diggs gets intimate with a goal post will inevitably cost them no matter how magical or healthy he is.

Giants 28, Cowboys 20

• LIKELIHOOD: 7/10

The Giants looked like they were having the time of their life. Jim Harbaugh dialed up a plan that made the Cowboys defense look lifeless and lost in their debut. That was the expectation going into the season: Dallas is still a half team trying to figure out how to take the heat off of Dak, Ceedee, and Pickens. It’s going to be a learned process on that side of the ball.

This could also be a scenario where the Dart and Skattebo played against an extended preseason traffic-cone defense that made them look incredible in primetime, and they were fortunate enough not to end up in the blue tent. But for now, John Harbaugh can still keep yelling “YOU ARE THE NEW YORK GIANTS!” since they’re in the win column.

Chiefs 31, Broncos 10

• LIKELIHOOD: 5/10

This was a tale of two quarterbacks coming off of brutal season-ending lower-body injuries: Bo Nix looked entirely hobbled, and Denver only had 176 total yards of offense- for a team that was supposed to get a boost on that side of the ball to take the defense over the top, it certainly felt the most concerning for the lack of zip he had from the bottom up, and the run game play calling didn’t do anything to take the heat off of him.

The Chiefs? Remember when Clyde Edward-Helaire was taken, and people were saying it was like giving Patrick Mahomes the keys to a Ferrari? That’s exactly how they used Kenneth Walker III, the reigning Super Bowl MVP. Walker has been salivating at the idea of being a bona fide #1 option after having some minimal carries in Seattle, and boy did Andy Reid give it to him! They gave him the ball 7 times on the opening drive on his way to a 173-yard performance. If Mahomes is going to be able to have less on his plate this year, like the way they game-planned last night, all of the offseason chatter about Denver having the roster to beat in the AFC West and the Chiefs finally falling off goes away.