Anything can happen in a one-game sample size in the NFL. Even two games can be written off as a fluke or an aberration. But three games is a trend that can’t be ignored — and after the first three games of the 2025 season, there are some concerning trends for a few teams. 

Panic is a word teams don’t like to use but for some predicaments, it’s fitting. Here’s a look around the league at a few situations and whether the “p” word is applicable: 

The Texans are 0-3 & the offense looks miserable

A 17-10 loss to the Jaguars in Week 3 left the Texans winless through three weeks. The game was close, just like Houston’s other two losses, but all that matters is that zero in the win column. The common thread in all three losses is the struggles on the offensive side of the ball, and the root of those issues is the overhauled offensive line. 

The Texans identified that unit as the top priority to fix this past offseason but through three weeks it looks like they cut some corners on the renovation. The big move was trading away veteran LT Laremy Tunsil who was replaced by second-round OT Aireontae Ersery. Houston also added G Laken Tomlinson, OT Cam Robinson and G Ed Ingram on cheap free agent deals or a minor trade in Ingram’s case, banking on some improvement from recent draft picks like OT Blake Fisher and C Juice Scruggs. 

The goal was to create a starting five that was more physical and edgy than what the Texans fielded in 2024, one that could establish a tone that matched Houston’s punishing defense and mash opponents in the run game. To that end, they moved on from former OC Bobby Slowik after the year and hired Rams assistant Nick Caley as the play-caller. Caley spent the last two years on Rams HC Sean McVay’s staff but his roots as a coach are in New England and that’s what Houston’s offense has been reminiscent of to start the year, at least as far as overall architecture. 

The results on the field don’t look much like those Patriots teams, as the offense as a whole has not come together. The offensive line is not creating notable movement in the running game, with the Texans ranking just 28th in the league in rushing. That’s putting more pressure on the passing game and that entire phase has not stepped up for the Texans. 

The remade offensive line has been punished in pass protection, especially in pure dropback situations which the lack of success on the ground has made more prevalent. It feels like the team isn’t running play action nearly as often, and they’re definitely not using pre-snap motion to create easy looks or to stress the defense. For all his foibles, Slowik was a buzzy coaching name at one point for his ability to create those easy buttons. 

Houston is also quietly starting to develop a C.J. Stroud problem. At minimum, the third-year quarterback isn’t transcending his surroundings. Another way to say that is he’s struggling. Over the first few weeks, he’s looked skittish, inaccurate and out of rhythm. It’s disconcerting because his accuracy was such a strong trait as a prospect and during his rookie year, but with all the punishment he’s taken last year and this year, it feels like Stroud has regressed. 

The Texans’ defense has been good enough to keep the team in games despite all of that, if Houston wasn’t also committing brutal unforced errors. In Week 1, it was a fumble on a potential game-winning drive, and in Week 3, star WR Nico Collins fumbled going into the red zone in a tie game with four minutes left. Stroud threw two more interceptions, including the clincher for the Jaguars when Ersery was beaten and the rusher affected Stroud’s throw. 

If you skipped reading until this point, the short version is it’s a mess, top to bottom. 

Some aspects of Houston’s offense will be easier to clean up than others, the fumbling for instance. Overall, though, the path to improvement is narrow. Stroud could elevate his game and the offense as a whole, but the preponderance of his tape is starting to look more like Sunday than the laser shows he put up as a rookie. The offensive line could gel with more time on task, especially younger players like Ersery and C Jake Andrews, and that could improve the overall results. Caley probably won’t overhaul his scheme midseason but a few tweaks to lean more on play action could have positive results. 

At this point, however, all this might just be rearranging the chairs on a sinking ship. Even though there are still 14 games to go, the loss was a virtual death knell for the Texans’ playoff hopes. In the past 25 years, less than one percent of all teams to start 0-3 have rebounded to make the postseason. 

Bengals disasterclass without Burrow

You’ll get in trouble putting too much stock in the transitive property in the NFL. But last week, the Vikings struggled to just six points in a blowout, primetime loss to the Falcons. On Sunday, those same Falcons got blown out 30-0 by an 0-2 Panthers team, while the Vikings romped to a 48-10 victory over the Bengals in their first game without star QB Joe Burrow. I don’t know how you sort all that out but the Bengals definitely don’t come out of it looking good. 

Sunday’s game went off the rails for Cincinnati at the end of the first half. Trailing 17-3 but driving with a chance to cut into the lead, Bengals TE Noah Fant fumbled on the first play out of the two-minute warning. It was scooped up by Vikings CB Isaiah Rodgers and returned 66 yards for a score — the second defensive score of the day by Rodgers after a pick six in the first quarter. 

On Cincinnati’s ensuing drive, WR Ja’Marr Chase had a catch and run that was punched out by, you guessed it, Rodgers. Three players later, the Vikings were in the end zone and ahead 31-3. They weren’t done either. The Bengals got the ball again with 28 seconds left and handed it off to try and run out the clock — only to fumble again and lose the ball. The Vikings kicked another field goal to score 17 points in the final two minutes of the first half. 

If you’re going to try and take an optimistic view of that for the Bengals, that comedy of errors is unlikely to repeat itself. There’s no shortage of other issues to work out, though. The Bengals had success with Browning the last time Burrow suffered a major injury, going 4-3 while Browning put up fairly strong numbers. It required them to re-engineer the offense to Browning’s strengths, leaning more on play action and heavy sets as opposed to spreading the field like Burrow preferred. 

The Bengals were ready to lean on the same playbook. But this isn’t the same team as in 2023. The offensive line isn’t as strong, particularly on the interior, and the defense is worse. Bengals RB Chase Brown had three yards on 10 carries Sunday and the rest of the run game didn’t fare a lot better. The defense was 23rd in yardage allowed and gave up 352 more in Week 3, and unlike the first two weeks, the Bengals didn’t get opportunistic turnovers. 

Cincinnati never gave itself a chance on Sunday against the Vikings with the turnovers but even before the wheels came off, the Vikings were taking it to them. There’s going to be an adjustment period, and the harsh truth might be that this team isn’t equipped to hide the dropoff from Burrow to Browning as well as the 2023 squad. 

Cowboys early contender for league’s worst defense

Either the Bears offense or the Cowboys defense was going to be in this slot depending on the results of their Week 3 matchup, and after Chicago dropped 31 points on Dallas in a win, the answer became fairly obvious. The Bears’ offense had been generating headlines for how clunky things had looked in the first year for HC Ben Johnson and QB Caleb Williams, including some floating the idea of benching Williams for backup QB Tyson Bagent. 

For a week at least, that noise around Williams and Johnson will be quieted. The former No. 1 pick was two yards shy of 300 and had four passing touchdowns on the day, slicing and dicing the Cowboys defense both in and out of structure. It’s not lost on anyone in either city that it came against Cowboys DC Matt Eberflus’ unit — Williams’ former coach who was fired midseason in 2024. 

Eberflus is a respected defensive mind with a ton of experience, but the transition to his system has been rocky so far. His scheme relies on getting pressure with four rushers, especially with a dominant pass-rushing three-technique defensive tackle, and playing zone coverage behind that. Dallas’ decision to trade DE Micah Parsons undisputably made Eberflus’ job harder because it hurt the Cowboys’ ability to get pressure. The team doesn’t have the rangy middle linebacker Eberflus prefers to help shore up the pass coverage, and the adjustment to a primarily zone system has been hard for the Cowboys’ defensive backs. It hasn’t helped that the Cowboys came into the year banged up at corner and that situation has only deteriorated. 

The net result has been the Cowboys getting shredded by each of their first three opponents. The Eagles went up and down the field on them in Week 1 before a weather delay threw both teams out of rhythm. Giants QB Russell Wilson turned back the clock to his peak, throwing for 450 yards and three touchdowns in a shootout. In Wilson’s other two games this year, he’s completed just half of his passes for 328 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions, so between that and Williams’ performance Sunday, the Cowboys are turning into the “get right” opponent for teams. 

Teams that play a lot of zone defense are heavily reliant on communication and smart defensive players to make the whole picture come together. Time on task will help Eberflus’ unit iron some of the former out, but frankly the Cowboys have serious personnel issues that just aren’t going to be fixed at this point in the calendar. Dallas will rank at or near the bottom of the league in total defense after Monday night and is currently conceding over 30 points a game. There’s little reason to think that will change substantially going forward. 

Jaguars top receiver is in his own head

Last year, Jaguars WR Brian Thomas Jr. was a breakout star and a bright spot in an otherwise terrible season, exploding onto the scene with 87 catches, 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns. Expectations for him and the rest of the Jaguars’ offense with HC Liam Coen taking over were sky-high after the work Coen did with a talented receiving corps in Tampa Bay in 2024. 

But Thomas had a slow start to training camp and that slow start has now officially bled over into the regular season. He had just one catch on seven targets in Week 1, and in Week 2, his struggles were magnified. Thomas caught four of 12 targets, including multiple drops and multiple plays where he appeared to shy away from contact over the middle. That put the spotlight on him in Week 3, with two competing schools of thought. The first was that Thomas was due for a rebound, as with 19 targets through two weeks it was clear he was a big part of the offense. 

The other was that something was wrong with Thomas, either mentally or physically. Coen did reveal a wrist injury that Thomas was supposedly dealing with in Week 2, though he wasn’t listed on the injury report. It didn’t limit his practice participation all that much in Week 3 either. Thomas’ biggest struggles do appear to be mental, as he once again battled drops and not being on the same page with QB Trevor Lawrence in Week 3. Thomas finished the win with two catches on six targets for 55 yards, bringing his total on the season to just seven receptions on 25 targets. 

One of those was a huge catch and run for 46 yards that ultimately set up the go-ahead touchdown, so perhaps that’s enough to snap Thomas out of whatever funk he’s been in. But when it comes to mental issues, things are rarely that simple. 

Not time to panic — yet

Some quick-hitters on teams that were considered for a spot on the panic meter before getting back on course to some degree in Week 3: 

• The Chiefs got in the win column with a two-score win over the also winless Giants, bringing them to 1-2 on the year. It was not a pretty win and the offense continued to look all kinds of out of sorts, though QB Patrick Mahomes kept firing downfield and eventually was able to connect on a few big plays with WR Tyquan Thornton. With how the schedule becomes more difficult in the next several weeks, this win was vital for Kansas City. While the offense still looks broken, they should be getting WRs Xavier Worthy and Rashee Rice back before the halfway point. Perhaps treading water until then will be enough. 
• The Eagles had minus-one passing yard in the first half and were down 26-7 early in the third quarter. Then it felt like they finally unchained the passing game and started featuring WRs A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith. Both came up with multiple big plays down the stretch and kept winning their individual matchups. Overall it’s still been a shaky start for first-year Eagles OC Kevin Patullo but Sunday’s scare might have taught some valuable lessons.