NFL teams only need to look back a year to see how little a Week 1 loss might mean

With a nearly seven-month wait since the Super Bowl for meaningful NFL games, it’s only natural for Week 1 to fuel some overreactions.

What happened last season was the latest example of why that might not be wise.

The Seattle Seahawks won the title against the New England Patriots in February in the only Super Bowl matchup ever played between two teams that started the season with a loss. Seattle lost to division rival San Francisco but got revenge in a blowout win in the playoffs. The Patriots shockingly lost at home to the Las Vegas Raiders, who won just two more games the entire season and wound up with the No. 1 overall draft pick.

That should be good news for the Los Angeles Rams, who came into the season as heavy Super Bowl favorites only to lose their opener 27-7 to San Francisco in Australia last week in their lowest-scoring game with MVP Matthew Stafford at quarterback.

In all, five teams made the playoffs last season after losing in Week 1, with Chicago, Houston and Carolina joining Seattle and New England in the postseason. Nearly half of last year’s Week 1 winners — seven of 16 — missed the playoffs, with Arizona, Cincinnati and Washington all winning six games or fewer for the entire season.

Since the playoffs expanded to seven teams per conference in 2020, an average of 4.3 teams per season have lost in Week 1 but made the playoffs; and 6.2 teams per season have won in Week 1 and missed the postseason.

But the Rams won’t be satisfied with just a playoff bid. After adding Myles Garrett and Trent McDuffie to a team that fell just short last season, they entered this one with plus-500 odds to win it all.

Just 12 of the 60 Super Bowl champions lost their season opener but the Seahawks were the third to do it in the past six seasons, joining Tampa Bay in 2020 and Kansas City in 2023.

But doing it after such a lopsided Week 1 loss would be unusual. Only one eventual champion, New England, lost the opener by at least 20 points. The Patriots lost 31-0 in Week 1 to Buffalo in 2003 before winning 34 of 37 games the rest of 2003 and ’04 to win back-to-back titles.

New York winneers: The New York City area has been at the bottom of the NFL over the past decade, with the New York Jets having the league’s worst record since 2016 and the Giants ranking second-worst.

That’s what made the start of this season so surprising. The Jets beat Tennessee 23-10 on Sunday afternoon and the Giants upset Dallas 28-20 on Sunday night. That marked the first time both those teams won in Week 1 since 2009. Both had lost the opener in five of the last seven years.

With both teams taking a 1-0 record into Week 2, this is just the second season since the start of 2016 that both the Jets and Giants had winning records at the same time. It also happened for a 10-week stretch in 2022, ending after the Jets lost in Week 15 to fall to 7-7 on the way to a 7-10 finish.

There have only been five times that both teams made the playoffs in the same season. It happened in 2006, 2002, 1986, 1985 and 1981.

Strong start: Coach John Harbaugh won his debut with the Giants as part of a winning weekend overall for the record-tying 10 new head coaches.

Six of the 10 opened with victories, including two in head-to-head matchups, with Mike McCarthy’s Pittsburgh Steelers beating Kevin Stefanski’s Atlanta Falcons, and Klint Kubiak’s Las Vegas Raiders beating Jeff Hafley’s Miami Dolphins.

The other winners were Arizona’s Mike LaFleur against the Los Angeles Chargers, Baltimore’s Jesse Minter against Indianapolis, and Buffalo’s Joe Brady beating Houston.

The other two losing coaches were Tennessee’s Robert Saleh against the Jets and Cleveland’s Todd Monken against Jacksonville.

Odds and ends: Among the statistical standouts from Week 1, the Philadelphia Eagles won their sixth straight opener as Nick Sirianni became the only coach in NFL history to appear in at least six openers and win them all. That’s the longest active winning streak in Week 1. The last team to have a longer streak was Kansas City with eight straight from 2015-22.

And Minnesota’s Carson Wentz replaced an injured Kyler Murray to throw three TD passes and no interceptions in a 39-22 win for Minnesota over Green Bay. The only other QB to come off the bench in an opener and throw at least three TDs and no INTs since starts were first tracked in 1950 was Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton, who did it in the first game in Vikings history in 1961 against Chicago.