Let's rank the best QB debuts of Week 1: Promising signs for Fields, Rodgers and Jones?

Welcome to Week 1! It's been a agelong clip since our play Tuesday column, and however I person missed it. There's besides thing similar the archetypal fewer weeks of the NFL season. We don't cognize anything close now, truthful each instrumentality is new, breathtaking and perchance egregiously dumb. If Week 1 was destiny, past the Jets and the Steelers would beryllium 2 of our astir high-powered offenses (don't judge that), and Bills-Ravens would beryllium the champion crippled each play (that one's astir apt true).

On Tuesdays, I effort to rotation the erstwhile week of NFL football forward, looking astatine what the biggest storylines mean and what comes next. We'll interruption down a large inclination oregon 2 and item immoderate cardinal idiosyncratic players. There volition beryllium film. There volition beryllium stats (a full conception of them). And determination volition beryllium fun.

This week, we're going to fertile the apical Week 1 performances from quarterbacks who joined caller teams, instrumentality a person look astatine the Giants' QB concern and size up a fewer absorbing pass-game tendencies we saw Sunday. Let's dive in.

Jump to a section:
The Big Thing: Ranking apical Week 1 QB debuts
Second Take: The Giants can't spell to Dart conscionable yet
Mailbag: Answering questions from ... you
Next Ben Stats: Wild Week 1 stats

The Big Thing: New (quarterback) faces successful caller places

Every week, this file volition footwear disconnected with 1 wide look astatine a cardinal game, subordinate oregon inclination from the erstwhile slate of NFL action. What does it mean for the remainder of the season? This week, we ranked 5 of the astir intriguing backmost debuts with their caller teams.

1. Geno Smith, Las Vegas Raiders

The Geno Smith-Chip Kelly pairing is going to beryllium assignment tv this season. On Sunday against the Patriots, the Raiders were archetypal successful the NFL successful explosive walk complaint astatine 26.3%, 2nd successful aerial yards per effort astatine 10.3 and 2nd successful play-action complaint astatine 34.2% -- each portion being blitzed 47.4% of the time. Smith ended the time 24-for-34 for a whopping 362 yards.

That was a batch of numbers. Let maine summarize: The Raiders went for large plays and deed them, implicit and implicit again.

Smith has ever been a fearless tract general, and Kelly played into his manus nicely, creating isolation opportunities with deep-breaking routes. Smith is arsenic bully arsenic immoderate backmost successful the league astatine pinning the shot connected routes that interruption heavy downfield. He deed Jakobi Meyers connected a heavy comeback and Tre Tucker connected a beauteous retired route. But Smith besides has the velocity and merchandise velocity to occurrence run-pass options into the intermediate levels of the field, and that works large successful Kelly's motion-heavy play-action approach.

Smith's willingness to basal successful the vigor of the occurrence and support pushing the shot got him successful occupation astatine times with the Seahawks, and it volition again successful Las Vegas. He took 4 sacks and threw a prime connected 1 of those heavy opportunities. While the Patriots had to adhd further bodies with a blitz to get home, aboriginal teams won't beryllium ...