The 2023 NFL season kicked off its first Sunday not with a bang, but with a lot of short, incomplete passes.
Week 1’s matchups were frustrating one way or another almost across the board. A league where success is defined by the passing game saw a sudden power outage behind center. What began with a helpless Patrick Mahomes on Thursday night continued as veterans and young quarterbacks alike, well, stunk.
Kenny Pickett led the Pittsburgh Steelers to one yard of total offense in his first 28 minutes of the season. Kirk Cousins, in true Kirk Cousins fashion, buttressed tidy stats with red zone turnovers and lost to a Tampa Bay Buccaneers team that appeared to be purposefully tanking the 2023 season. Deshaun Watson only looked good in comparison to the Joe Burrow mannequin the Cincinnati Bengals Weekend at Bernie’s through a 24-3 loss in Cleveland for 3.5 quarters Sunday afternoon.
This was merely a sample of the power outage that struck the NFL’s opening weekend. But which quarterbacks were the most disappointing?
Fortunately, we’ve got tools to better understand just how damaging these underwhelming performances were. Using the advanced stat expected points added (EPA) can gauge how much a quarterback brings to the table compared to a typical player. By comparing each passer’s Week 1 EPA against their 2022 average we get a better picture of just how frustrating their debuts were. And we can find both of those thanks to The Athletic’s Ben Baldwin and his incredibly useful stats sites RBSDM.com and HabitatRing.com.
Who was the worst? Well, there were several candidates but only one man can truly call himself the grossest quarterback of Week 1.
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Honorable mention: Deshaun Watson, Cleveland Browns
2022 expected points added (EPA) per game: -1.6
Week 1 EPA: -3.5
Difference: 1.9 points worse
Watson was unremarkable in his 2023 debut. He ran for a touchdown and threw for another but also needed 29 passes to throw for only 154 yards — a 5.3 yards per attempt number that would have ranked dead last among all starting quarterbacks last season by a significant margin.
So why isn’t he higher on this list? Because he was a disaster in 2022. Watson, who was traded for despite more than 20 accusations of sexual misconduct and what the NFL described as “predatory behavior,” then given a fully guaranteed $230 million extension, was the league’s 40th best quarterback among all passers to play at least 100 snaps last fall. He was merely forgettable against the Bengals, which feels like a win.
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Desmond Ridder, Atlanta Falcons
2022 expected points added (EPA) per game: -0.4
Week 1 EPA: -5.6
Difference: 5.2 points worse
This was roughly what we expected from the Falcons; Ridder only had 22 non-kneeldown dropbacks to start the season while his running backs toted the ball 25 times. But his lone touchdown pass had almost nothing to do with his ability as a passer and everything to do with Bijan Robinson being a superhero.
Welcome to the @NFL, @Bijan5Robinson!
📺: FOX | NFL+ pic.twitter.com/yHKxx8fed4
— Atlanta Falcons (@AtlantaFalcons) September 10, 2023
Ridder’s average pass traveled only 3.5 yards downfield. He targeted his wide receivers five times. He targeted former top-10 draft picks Kyle Pitts and Drake London four times. Maybe the Falcons can grind everyone into dust this season with the run game, or maybe they’ll fall behind early and have to hope their young quarterback remembers how to throw deep.
6
Kirk Cousins, Minnesota Vikings
2022 expected points added (EPA) per game: 2.6
Week 1 EPA: -3.2
Difference: 5.8 points worse
The Cousins era may be winding down in Minnesota. While his efficiency dipped in 2022, Vikings fans could at least take solace in the fact he was winning close games en route to a 13-4 record (albeit with a negative-three point differential).
As tends to happen, that luck evaporated a season later. Cousins threw for 344 yards and a pair of touchdowns, but turned the ball over three times. He completed only two of seven pass attempts inside the red zone with a touchdown and this interception:
Bucs INT at the goal line!
📺: #TBvsMIN on CBS
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/G4uoYVOqQn pic.twitter.com/DauoqZ1OqE— NFL (@NFL) September 10, 2023
Cousins finished the game with a 102.8 passer rating. This did not reflect his actual impact on Sunday.
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Ryan Tannehill, Tennessee Titans
2022 expected points added (EPA) per game: 2.4
Week 1 EPA: -10.7
Difference: 13.1 points worse
The Titans’ leading, and only, scorer Sunday was kicker Nick Folk. Tannehill threw three interceptions. He attempted 21 passes that traveled more than five yards downfield and completed six of them. He was, in technical terms, very bad.
4
Justin Fields, Chicago Bears
2022 expected points added (EPA) per game: 1.5
Week 1 EPA: -11.6
Difference: 13.2 points worse
D.J. Moore’s arrival was supposed to unlock Fields’ potential. Instead, the perennial 1,000-yard threat had two targets in the first three quarters (he caught both, he’s great). While Fields had some nice moments and impressive scrambles, he still ran into traffic and telegraphed throws, leaving his Bears with little recourse once the Packers took a double-digit lead in the second half.
QUAY WALKER WILL NOT BE DENIED!
PICK-SIX 🙌#GBvsCHI | #GoPackGo
📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/GjnirpPMqu
— Green Bay Packers (@packers) September 10, 2023
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Kenny Pickett, Pittsburgh Steelers
2022 expected points added (EPA) per game: 1.2
Week 1 EPA: -17.5
Difference: 18.7 points worse
Pickett threw the ball 46 times and gained just 198 net yards. 131 of his passing yards came in the fourth quarter of a game the San Francisco 49ers led 27-7. He attempted eight passes that traveled at least 14 yards downfield and threw twice as many interceptions (two) as completions (one).
This was not the step forward for which Steelers fans had hoped.
2
Joe Burrow, Cincinnati Bengals
2022 expected points added (EPA) per game: 7.6
Week 1 EPA: -16.7
Difference: 24.3 points worse
I’m not sure this even expresses how bad things went for Burrow Sunday. The quarterback who finished fourth in last year’s MVP voting was three touchdowns and a field goal worse in his 2023 opener than he was in his average 2022 start.
The Bengals had 15 possessions — 13 if we’re excluding kneel-downs — in Cleveland Sunday. They gained more than 20 yards on two of them in a 24-3 loss. Head coach Zac Taylor pulled his starting quarterback with five minutes left in the fourth quarter, leaving him to languish in a 14 of 31, 82-yard, zero- touchdown performance.
This was comically and shockingly inept. He completed one pass that traveled more than seven yards beyond the line of scrimmage. It went for 10 yards.
Burrow is now 1-5 against the Browns in his career. He has yet to escape Cleveland with a win. His offenses are averaging 10.7 points per game in his last three trips to Cleveland Browns Stadium. Maybe we were the stupid ones for expecting more.
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Daniel Jones, New York Giants
2022 expected points added (EPA) per game: 4.6
Week 1 EPA: -22.8
Difference: 27.4 points worse
It looked like Burrow had the top spot sewn up — then came the deluge. A rainstorm and a typhoon dressed in blue and silver combined to make Jones thoroughly and utterly useless on Sunday night. The newly extended $160 million quarterback only attempted seven passes that traveled at least 10 yards downfield despite trailing for 53 minutes in prime time. He as many completions on those attempts (one) as interceptions.
Jones threw two interceptions and fumbled twice, though he was able to recover both. He gained 104 yards passing and lost 47 yards due to sacks. Some of these problems were out of his control — weather, blocking, drops, etc — but some were bad decisions in the face of pressure. Oof.
