Through the Quarterback's Eyes
Breaking down key Week 1 plays by Baker Mayfield, Jordan Love, and Geno Smith in their own words
As expected, the first week of the NFL season delivered a ton of great action and drama. Below, I’ll break down some of the key plays from the week through the eyes of the quarterbacks who executed them.
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Buccaneers 23, Falcons 20
We’ll start in Atlanta where the Buccaneers got a huge win over the Falcons in a critical early-season NFC South matchup.
Tampa trailed 20-17 with 1:04 remaining. And while they were already in field goal range, they were looking for 6.
The Buccaneers went with an empty formation and had Mike Evans and Emeka Egbuka aligned next to each other. You can see the route combination illustrated below:
While Egbuka’s post would end up being the target on the play, it was set up by Mike Evans. As Baker Mayfield said afer the game: “Mike (Evans) draws a lot of attention. He got the safety to bite down on it.”
The safety biting on Evans’ route left no one to help inside on Egbuka’s post. As Mayfield said, that created “the 1-on-1 coverage for Mek, and Mek makes the easy play.”
Mike Evans said after the game that “Right before he (Egbuka) caught that last touchdown, he called it. He wanted a post route. And he said I’m about to game him. And he did.”
What a huge play early in the season, and what a great NFL debut for Egbuka, who caught two touchdown passes. We heard a lot about his maturity and football intelligence as a receiver from everyone on the Buccaneers who was asked about him throughout the summer. That was on display in his first game.
I broke down Egbuka’s skillset in collaboration with
this summer. You can check that out here.Packers 27, Lions 13
The Packers were in control for pretty much the entire afternoon against the Lions, with the final score of 27-13 being much closer than the game actually felt.
With Green Bay leading 10-3 in the second quarter, they took control and didn’t look back. After a 48-yard completion to Romeo Doubs, the Packers had the ball at the Lions’ 17-yard line.
They came out in a 1x3 closed formation with 3 wide receivers to the right. Based on the way Detroit matched up with a linebacker over the tight end to one side and 3 DB’s over their 3 receivers to the right, it was clear this was man coverage: