Which teams should be worried after Week 1 upsets?

Week 1 in the 2022 NFL season featured a lot of on-paper upsets, but Voch Lombardi breaks down what they mean for the winners and losers.

Video Transcript

What's up y'all? It's Voch Lombardi. Watch every second of this NFL season when and where you want it only on The Zone.

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There were some upsets in the NFL week one and I think they're worth talking about. I looked at them, and there were a couple that kind of stood out to me that I felt like we can try to break down on the deeper level, right, because sometimes teams just play bad and you get upsets. But I think these four games that we're going to talk about, I think their upsets came from a deeper, you know, more nuanced reason, right.

Take a look at Green Bay versus Minnesota. And I'm not saying this is some changing of the guard situation because that's kind of corny to me, but I do think there is this, hey, Aaron Rodgers is not the invincible dude that he once was. So let's bring him the fight. So going into this game plan, it makes a little bit of sense, right. We're going to bring the fight to him, as opposed to just, let's try to keep the ball away from Aaron Rodgers. Let's try to run Dalvin Cook to kind of keep the clock away, right.

Let's do this. I'm asking 10 of y'all that's watching right now, right. If you take Kirk Cousins and Dalvin Cook, I'm asking 10 of you guys, which one would you rather lead your offense with? And all 10 of you are probably going to say, well, we should probably go Dalvin Cook first. Dalvin Cook is the better player than Kirk Cousins. That makes sense.

But the only way to get Justin Jefferson involved is via Kirk Cousins. So the only way to trust Justin Jefferson is you have to trust your quarterback. And I'll tell you what, it looks like a proper decision. And a lot of weird things can happen in these division games. We know each other, and all this kind of stuff. But I think that the Green Bay Packers are a totally different team now. And the Minnesota Vikings, they walked in with this aggressive mindset that we're going to get one of the best receivers in the game going and there's nothing you can do about it.

Meanwhile, Green Bay is going through a lot of roster changes and they're trying to find their new identity. They walked into this thing saying, you know, we're probably going to run the ball with Aaron Jones a little bit more. Aaron Jones had five catches for 49 yards. AJ Dillon actually ended up getting more carries. So what I think ends up happening is when you get punched in the face, shouts out to Mike Tyson, when you get punched in the face, you kind of go back to what you know.

And going back to what we know when we talk about Green Bay, it's passing the football. Green Bay's top receivers where AJ Dillon, Romeo Doubs, Robert Tonyan, Christian Watson, and a cat I've never heard of named Josiah Deguara. Now you take those names and you stack it next to, all right, we're going to open up with Justin Jefferson. We're going to get Thielen involved when it's time to get Thielen involved. And when it's all over, we're going to run the ball with Dalvin Cook and force you to stop us after you trail damn near the whole game.

I think, you know, when you go that approach, you know, you're bound to have this upset. But I wonder how long it's going to be an upset because when we play the next Minnesota versus Green Bay game, is Minnesota going to be favored? Are they going to be the underdog then? I think that's something that we should keep our eyes on.

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When we look at the Bengals versus Steelers upset, you know, and of course, the Steelers, they get the name. If you would have told somebody 10 years ago, hey the Bengals are clearly the more superior team than the Pittsburgh Steelers, then they'll probably laugh at you. But you know, Pittsburgh is going through roster changes. Ben Roethlisberger is no longer one of the best quarterbacks in the league. And you know, Cincinnati has a Joe Burrow, but Pittsburgh still won.

Why is that? Well you know, first of all, Pittsburgh, they had the coaching advantage. Mike Tomlin is amazing. But I think Joe Burrow was rusty in this one. And I feel confident saying that this upset happened via rust because you know, Joe Burrow came out and throw-- and threw four interceptions and then he gave away a fumble. But he still almost won the game four times in a row. Like once Joe got going, you could see how dangerous he was.

You have a little problem with your long snapper, your automatic kicker isn't automatic any more, then you give the Pittsburgh Steelers all the opportunity in the world to get back at you. Now, do I think that later down the line when Pittsburgh plays against the Bengals again, do I think that Pittsburgh's going to have a shot at this? Absolutely not. I think the Bengals are going to walk in with a bad attitude and they're going to seal the deal, as they should.

This was a fun one. As a Cowboys fan, I walked out a week one saying, hey man, my team just looked horrible. They looked filthy. We only scored 3 points. If Geno Smith goes out there and scores more than 3 points, I want to fire. my coaches. Well, not only did he score more than 3 points, but he came out and he beat the hell out of the Denver Broncos.

The Denver Broncos, a team that we looked at to be much better than the Seattle Seahawks. But when you think about it, the Seahawks, you know, they don't look all that terrible on paper. It's just that the quarterback position means a lot to us. The Seattle Seahawks, if you look at their roster, they're fine. I wouldn't call them a bad team. It's just that the division that they're in, they're in the NFC North, so they're in one of the toughest divisions in football. And we may have to revisit that because San Francisco lost.

But we look at you know, the Seattle Seahawks and we would think that they're not the team that they once was because Russell Wilson is gone. Russell Wilson is with the Broncos now. They turned this into a whole anti Russell thing. They booed him they didn't even do a jumbotron thank you type of deal, right. But the Seattle Seahawks, they have a run game that is respectable. They have a DK Metcalf, a Tyler Lockett, and an opportunistic defense. So why can't the Seattle Seahawks come in and beat the Denver Broncos?

Well the Denver Broncos had the better roster, of course, but the Denver Broncos coaching stinks. And I think those dudes, they looked unprepared. They didn't look in sync. They didn't look like they utilized their talent to their best advantages, right. But the one thing that really shined, right, the one thing that really made us look at the Broncos coaching staff and go, oh something bad is going on here, is at the end of the game when you have an opportunity to win it, and you're driving, and you have 48 seconds left on the clock with three timeouts, and you play for the 65-yard field goal.

You wanted the 65-yard field goal. Your desired outcome was to attempt a 65-yard field goal. And you missed it. And everybody on Twitter collectively dragged you for it. Coaching let you down, Russell Wilson and the Denver Broncos. If they play again, will the Seahawks win again? I don't know. Are the Broncos coaches still going to be there? I don't know. We'll cross that road whenever we get there.

They're probably not going to play again. Melvin Gordon came out and said, hey, if we were to play again, we'll beat them again if we saw them in the Super Bowl or something. You're not going to see the Seahawks or the Broncos in the Super Bowl, especially after the game that we saw last night. Sorry, Melvin Gordon.

And as far as the Titans versus Giants match up, this was a strange one because the Titans were a team who last year, they were the best team in the AFC by record, of course. And the Giants are a team that I've been laughing at for the past five years. So Voch, what's the super detailed reason why the Giants beat the Titans? I just didn't think the Titans were very good in the first place.

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