NFL Week 2 takeaways: Chiefs’ early troubles, second-year QBs’ struggles among five things we learned

We’re only two weeks into the 2025 NFL season, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been enough action to draw some conclusions. Each week of the season is a new data point, after all, and the more of those we get, the more we learn. And in Week 2, we learned a whole lot. That’s why we’re here with five things we learned.

Some will be big-picture takeaways on the league at large, an in-depth look at a team unit or even specific to just one player.

But we’re going to nail down some of what mattered and happened this past weekend.

Week 1 can be a liar but also sometimes prophetic

Think about how many of the opening week’s results that just got completely flipped on their head.

The Browns went from being competitive with the Bengals to getting absolutely blasted off the field by the Ravens. The Giants couldn’t move the ball on Washington but totaled 506 yards of offense against the Cowboys.

The Titans competed with the Broncos on the road but got blown out by the Rams at home. The Jets’ offensive looked incredible against the Steelers but looked inept against the Bills. The same goes for the Steelers’ offense, which torched the Jets but got totally shut down by the Seahawks.

The Lions seemingly operated in a box against the Packers but blew the doors off the Bears, hanging 52 points and racking up big plays. The Raiders’ offense torched the Patriots but embarrassingly averaged just 3.4 yards per play against the Chargers.

Then there was the stuff that looked exactly the same.

Green Bay’s defense is suffocating. (More on that soon.) Baltimore’s offense is explosive. The Miami Dolphins are in dire straits. The Colts can move the ball effectively when Daniel Jones plays on time. The Cardinals are pretty good, but not good enough to just pull away from bad teams. The Eagles can strangle the life out of a game with their running and defense. The Falcons’ defense appears to be a much-improved one. The Texans have a major issue on the offensive line.

Joe Burrow takes too many hits

It’s never good when your former No. 1 overall pick is being directly compared to a guy whose career ended in an early retirement after taking too many hits. That comparison was the case for Burrow after he suffered his latest long-term injury.

Burrow has missed extended time for third season in six years. He had an ACL tear his rookie year and missed the season’s second half. He had the wrist injury in 2023 and missed the final seven games. And now he is set to miss three months of this season with turf toe and torn ligaments in his toe.

The Bengals have failed to adequately protect him, supplying him with offensive lines that ranked — in order — 27th, 25th, 30th, 22nd, 29th and now 24th, according to pass-blocking grades by Pro Football Focus. He “only” has the 13th-highest pressure rate out of 44 qualified quarterbacks during that stretch, according to Tru Media, but he has the fourth-fastest time to pressure at just 2.41 seconds. He’s taken the second-most total sacks and lost the second-most sack yards despite missing nearly a full season’s worth of games in the six-year span. (All of this is despite the fact that he consistently ranks inside the top 10 in average time to throw.)

The man just gets hit far too often. And here’s the thing: it was actually an issue going back to college, so you’d figure that at least some of it has been on him. Sacks are often a quarterback stat, after all. His pressure-to-sack ratio was abnormally high for a top draft pick when he was at LSU, sitting at 23.1% across the 2018 and 2019 seasons combined. It’s continued at that level in the pros, where he has a 22.1% pressure-to-sack ratio. It’s never dipped below 19.5%, and this season was at 25% before his injury.

The fact that Burrow has been able to overcome those issues and perform at as high of a level as almost anyone in the league is remarkable, but something about his playing style and his willingness to keep the ball for as long as he does might need to change if he wants to keep denting the scoreboard and throwing to Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins for the long term.

Green Bay’s defense really is that good

Remember what I said about what the Lions did to the Bears defense in Week 2? They hung 511 yards and 52 points while averaging 8.8 yards per play. They converted half of their third- and fourth-down opportunities and turned six of their SEVEN red-zone trips into touchdowns. They had seven gains of 20 yards or more.

In Week 1, the Packers made them look inept, holding them to 246 yards and 13 points, including 3.8 yards per play. They went 8 of 19 on their third- and fourth-down opportunities and turned just one of four red-zone trips into a touchdown. They had only one play that gained 20 or more yards. Green Bay harassed Jared Goff all afternoon, took away all the air space for the receivers and had the running game (which broke out for 134 yards against Chicago), operating in a box as it totaled 46 yards on 22 carries.

The Commanders moved the ball fairly easily against the Giants in Week 1. They only scored 21 points, but they piled up 432 yards and averaged 6.6 yards per play, which would have ranked first in the NFL in 2024. They only went 4 of 11 on third downs but they turned three of their four red-zone opportunities into touchdowns.

In Week 2, the Packers made them look silly. Washington totaled 230 yards and averaged a pathetic 3.5 yards per play — more than a full yard worse than the worst team in the NFL in 2024. They went 5 of 16 on third down and only entered the red zone once, when the game was already well out of reach late in the fourth quarter.

Green Bay is allowing a hilarious 3.7 yards per play to date, as well as 1.50 points per drive and a 41.5% success rate. The Packers have added a league-best 13.94 expected points with their defense, according to Pro-Football-Reference, and they haven’t even really started forcing any turnovers yet.

Micah Parsons and the pass rush are totally dominating up front, as the Packers have an absurd 43.6% pressure rate through the first two games of the season despite blitzing on only 18.1% of opponent dropbacks. The run defense has been just as good despite the absence of Kenny Clark, with everyone along the front contributing along the way. Their two opponents have combined for 2.4 yards per carry and NEGATIVE 0.05 yards before contact per rush attempt. Yet, the Packers are currently hitting the average ball carrier in the backfield.

And none of this is even mentioning the secondary, which has been utterly suffocating. KeiSean Nixon had five pass breakups in Week 2, an absurd number. Carrington Valentine has allowed just two completions on six targets. Xavier McKinney is everywhere. Evan Williams has come close to covering just as much ground.

These guys are just outrageous. 

The second-year QBs are works in progress

It hasn’t been the cleanest of starts for Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye, Michael Penix Jr., J.J. McCarthy and Bo Nix.

They have combined to average negative EPA per dropback, though much of that is due to McCarthy’s struggles in the passing game. But they also have just a 42.3% combined success rate, according to Tru Media, with only one of them (Maye) ranking inside the top half of the league in that statistic.

They’ve been off target with a combined 13.4% of their throws, and none of them rank inside the top 20 in that stat despite there being only 34 qualified quarterbacks. They’ve taken a ton of sacks (8.2% sack rate, with McCarthy’s sky-high number mostly being canceled out by Nix’s minuscule one) and have rarely created explosive plays (5.6% of drop-backs, again with none of them ranking in the top half of the league).

Williams has looked out of sorts for much of his time on the field, mostly only making plays off schedule, even during the opening script of games. Daniels was efficient against the Giants and mostly hasn’t put the ball in harm’s way, but he was totally shut down by Green Bay and is now dealing with a knee injury.

Maye had good counting stats because he threw the ball so many times against the Raiders, but he didn’t look clean and forced a lot of throws. He thankfully bounced back against Miami in Week 2. Penix went the other way, airing it out against the Buccaneers before coming crashing back to earth against the Vikings.

McCarthy has basically been a disaster for seven of the eight quarters he’s played this season, with the electric fourth quarter against the Bears overshadowing what he did the rest of that game. Now he’s dealing with an ankle injury and could miss up to a month. Nix was similarly awful against the Titans in Week 1, and he probably should’ve been picked four or so times instead of two. He was better against the Colts, but the defense — surprisingly — let the team down by giving up a game-winning drive.

The Chiefs might be in trouble

We’ve seen what Kansas City’s offense looks like so far, and it hasn’t been pretty.

The explosive plays are gone. The wide receivers can’t get open. Travis Kelce is dropping balls and miscommunication with Patrick Mahomes near the goal line left and right. The passing game is seemingly operating in a four by four box, unable to break free except when Mahomes operates outside the structure of the offense. The play design and schematics are not freeing players for easy opportunities.

The run game is somehow even worse. Mahomes is this team’s leading rusher. He’s currently on pace to run for more than 1,000 yards. That’s wildly impressive but it’s also a sign of how nothing is open in the passing game and he’s having to run for his life, and that Isiah Pacheco and Kareem Hunt are stuck running in mud.

The defense is concerning as well. 

The Chiefs have been able to stop the run (3.6 yards per carry, with only 2.07 per carry after first contact, according to Tru Media), but they are springing leaks all over the secondary. Opponents have completed 71.4% of their passes at an average of 7.5 yards per attempt, with three touchdowns and no interceptions. They’re bottom-10 in EPA allowed per drop-back and they aren’t getting their hands on the ball at all. They’ve managed a league-average pressure rate up front, but only by sending blitzes on 48.5% of drop-backs, and they still have a below-average time to pressure.

Steve Spagnuolo usually has his unit rounding into shape by the end of the year, but there’s more work to do this season than there has been over the past few and it could take some time to see what we want to see on that side of the ball. With the Chiefs already stuck down at 0-2 and with upcoming games against the Ravens (Week 4) and Lions (Week 6), this isn’t looking that great for a team that won’t get Rashee Rice back until Week 7 and may have to play with Xavier Worthy at less than full strength both until then and for the rest of the season.