Vikings EDGE Dallas Turner’s dominance to Chicago’s high-powered offense: the NFC North learned a lot in Week 1
From the Minnesota Vikings’ improbable win to the Detroit Lions surviving, the NFC North is in an interesting place after Week 1.
Week 1 of the NFL season is in the books, and the four teams of the NFC North arguably had the most intriguing start throughout the league.
The early window of games saw the Chicago Bears get into a shootout with the Carolina Panthers before pulling away for a 59-37 win. In the Motor City, the Detroit Lions built a 21-0 lead before holding on in overtime 31-30.
It got more interesting in the afternoon window, as the Minnesota Vikings lost quarterback Kyler Murray and got down 22-10, only to put up 29 unanswered points to get a massive 17-point win, 39-22 over the Green Bay Packers.
Within these games, we learned quite a bit about all of these teams, and our beat writers for all four markets in the NFC North highlighted the biggest one.
Minnesota Vikings: Dallas Turner is a dude
There was a lot of speculation and discussion about whether or not trading Jonathan Greenard to the Philadelphia Eagles was a smart move. It wasn’t about Greenard at all, but rather to get Dallas Turner into the starting lineup, and it took him all of four seconds to prove the Vikings right.
On the Green Bay Packers’ first defensive play, Turner blew through left tackle Jordan Morgan to get his first of seven quarterback hits and 10 pressures per NextGenStats. He also generated seven of his 10 pressures quickly, within 2.5 seconds. Turner is still younger than what Jared Verse was in his debut with the Los Angeles Rams in 2024 while having the same number of sacks, and he’s only going to get better.
– Tyler Forness, A to Z Minnesota
Green Bay Packers: Offensive line is predictably bad
Aaron Banks didn’t play, which made things worse, but he’s not good enough to fundamentally change what the unit looked like. Obviously playing a Brian Flores’ aggressive defense blitzing on essentially 80% of the snaps is a tough task, but the combination of Donovan Jennings and Jacob Monk at the guard spots is a culmination of multiple failures from every level in the organization. The worst part is that it’s hard to improve at this point, even though there are still options in free agency that would certainly be an upgrade over Jennings and Monk in a vacuum.
– Wendell Ferreira, A to Z Green Bay
Chicago Bears: Offense is firing on all cylinders
When head coach Ben Johnson said that the Chicago Bears’ offense intended to break the NFL’s scoring record this season, it seemed like a very very optimistic outlook for his unit. After one game, it might have been a warning. The Bears scored 59 points, which in itself was nearly historic for a season opener, but how the Bears scored those points and operated on offense was even more impressive.
Starting with the run game, the Bears have the best RB duo in the league. Both D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monanagai topped 100 yards again in the same game while the offense has a whole scored six rushing touchdowns behind some really good blocking. And that doesn’t mean Caleb Williams had a quiet day. Williams completed 72.4 percent of his passes for 269 yards and two more scores. He was hitting his trademark plays only he can make, but he was also hitting his checkdowns as well. It was one game, I get that, but this offense showed absolutely no weakness outside of the issues they created for themselves.
– Kole Noble, A to Z Chicago
Detroit Lions: Balanced pass rush
If there’s one thing we learned about the Lions, it’s that the improved pass rush wasn’t just a thing we were seeing in the summertime. The Lions got after Tyler Shough in this game, racking up 26 pressures and five sacks. On top of that, they quickly improved their time-to-pressure metric by going from 2.92 last year to 2.40. Just an unreal change. Now, we’ll have to see them do that against Josh Allen and the Bills on Thursday to tell if it’s for real. But all indications are that it is.
– Mike Payton, A to Z Detroit
