It’s easy to wave off one tough game as just a bad day to have a bad day. Two bad games is more concerning, but at the same time nothing that can’t be overcome. 

Three bad games is officially a trend, however. With most of Week 3 in the books, there are officially some teams and players who should be shifting into panic mode. 

Green Bay Packers

Beating the Jets in overtime kept some heat off the Packers, at least preventing them from inclusion in everyone’s 0-2 columns coming out of last Sunday. There’s nowhere to hide after a turd of a performance in an island game on Thursday night, though. The 0-2 Falcons came into Lambeau Field for the Packers’ home opener and dominated Green Bay on both sides of the ball. Atlanta rushed for 242 yards in a 35-14 win. 

On the other side of the ball, the Packers rushed for a measly 17 yards, punctuating just how poor the offensive line has been to start the season. Packers QB Jordan Love was under pressure on nearly half of his dropbacks, and this is despite the Falcons being without their top two edge rushers from last year in James Pearce Jr. and Jalon Walker. There were concerns about Green Bay’s offensive line heading into this season, but the unit’s performance through three weeks has been a worst-case scenario that hardly anyone could have envisioned. 

Green Bay GM Brian Gutekunst made a series of calculated gambles with the front five coming into this year. The Packers shifted former first-rounder Jordan Morgan to left tackle, the position he was drafted to play but a position where he’d only seen a handful of snaps through his first two seasons. They rolled the dice on Aaron Banks being better in Year 2 after paying him $20 million per year in an eyebrow-raising deal last spring. Gutekunst also elected not to pursue or retain proven insurance at swing tackle for either Morgan or RT Zach Bako-Bewele, who was coming off a partial patellar tendon tear late last season. And at right guard, Green Bay bet on someone emerging from a young and unproven cast of players. 

So far, every decision has backfired. 

Morgan is still finding his sea legs. Bako-Bewele fully tore his patellar tendon in Week 2, setting up a long and arduous rehab and pushing 2025 second-round OT Anthony Belton into the lineup. Banks has been dealing with a knee injury that has kept him sidelined more often than not so far in 2026. That and the injury to Bako-Bewele have pushed both young guards Jacob Monk and Jager Burton into the starting lineup, and Thursday night suggested neither player is ready for that responsibility. 

Unfortunately for the Packers, offensive line is one of the hardest positions to fix in-season. Green Bay has made one or two moves but it’s not like there’s a surplus of competent linemen available at this point in the calendar. The options who are available come with major age or injury question marks, and then there’s a whole process of learning the playbook and building chemistry with new teammates. 

The offensive line is also far from the only issue with the 2026 Packers (though it’s the most glaring). The current running back room doesn’t seem capable of maximizing what it would get from even average blocking, and without a reliable run game to lean on the whole offense starts to fall apart. The defense had moments in the first two weeks but surrendering 35 points to the Falcons and QB Michael Penix Jr. making his first start after an ACL tear last year is a big bucket of cold water over any early-September optimism. 

The return of star OLB Micah Parsons offers some hope down the line. The same is true for RB Josh Jacobs once his NFL discipline is resolved. But unless the Packers can figure things out up front, it might not be enough to satisfy the high expectations fans in Green Bay had for this team. 

Patriots QB Drake Maye

Hopes were high that Maye would bounce back when he wasn’t playing the Seahawks and their elite defense. That hasn’t happened — if anything, it’s gotten worse. Maye hasn’t thrown a touchdown since Week 1 and he turned the ball over three more times in Week 3’s 35-6 whooping by the Jaguars. 

Sometimes turnovers aren’t the fault of the quarterback. In Maye’s case, though, the turnovers have been painfully his fault. Both interceptions were horrendous decisions; on the first, he forced the ball into the end zone on a rollout and gave Jaguars CB Travis Hunter a great look for his first career pick. On the second, down 21-3, Maye was clearly pressing too hard and forced a ball to a receiver on the sideline who was not open by any stretch of the imagination. Even his lost fumble was a Yakety-Sax style play where the ball just squirted out of his hands as he loaded up to throw deep. 

It’s been so bad that it feels important to offer a reminder — Maye was a single vote away from winning MVP last year at just 23 years old. He had 31 touchdown passes and eight interceptions while leading the NFL in both completion percentage and yards per attempt. He looked like one of the league’s brightest rising stars. 

That makes the falloff as perplexing as it is stark. It’s not completely unprecedented for quarterbacks to regress to the mean after huge seasons. Carson Wentz was a frontrunner for MVP in 2016 with 33 touchdowns in 13 games before tearing his ACL. The following season was much tougher sledding, and by the end of the 2020 season he had lost his job to Jalen Hurts. Former Falcons QB Matt Ryan had 38 touchdowns against seven picks in his MVP 2015 season, then fell all the way to 20 touchdowns and 12 picks the following year. 

Usually there’s an obvious reason for the dropoff, though. Wentz was coming off a major injury, Ryan was adjusting to a new play-caller after Kyle Shanahan left for the 49ers’ head coaching gig. In the case of Maye, he’s in the same system with OC Josh McDaniels. There’s no obvious injury, either. Maye took a pain-killing shot for his throwing shoulder before the Super Bowl in February, but it hasn’t popped up on the injury report this year or been cited as an issue. Maye was asked about it Sunday and said there was no issue, although it took him a while to get there. 

“I like to say that when you have that much time off and you get to focus on getting back, you’re going out there healthy,” said Maye via ESPN’s Mike Reiss. “You’re going to get banged up every now and then, but at the same time, a lot of guys are banged up. I’m looking forward to getting back to playing winning football, that’s the main thing. And knowing I play a big role in that and taking the bull by its horns … I wouldn’t say there is a problem with my shoulder.”

The biggest issue for Maye right now seems to be decision-making. On the one hand, that seems like it should be a simple fix. Maye is entirely in control of the decisions he makes, as opposed to other issues that can crop up for quarterbacks like play-calling, protection or drops. 

On the other hand, if it were that simple a fix, Maye would have figured it out by now. 

The Patriots and Maye are past the point of this performance being a wake-up call. That was Week 1 when Maye had three fourth-quarter interceptions. Now it just has to be better from Maye, point blank. 

Los Angeles Chargers

The miserable start to the season continued for the Chargers in Week 3. They got exactly what they needed to pull an upset over a Bills team that looked like a Super Bowl favorite through the first two weeks, stealing three turnovers on Buffalo’s first four drives. The Chargers were only able to turn that into 10 points, with poor execution dooming a pair of third downs and K Cameron Dicker missing a field goal attempt. 

Los Angeles collected two more giveaways from Buffalo but stayed stuck on just 10 points off turnovers. To beat a team like the Bills, that’s just not good enough. You have to take advantage when a team like that is in a giving mood, and the Chargers are still not dialed in enough on the details on offense. When the Bills untracked their own offense in the second half, the Chargers didn’t have any margin to spare. 

Things were better on offense for the Chargers than the first two weeks, although that was a low bar to clear. They were able to hit a few plays down the field, Herbert looked slightly more comfortable and they topped 100 yards rushing as a team. 

However, the run game was not a consistent weapon. Through three games, the Chargers are still trying to unlock RB Omarion Hampton, and there’s a case to be made that backup RB Keaton Mitchell is a better fit for OC Mike McDaniel’s offense. Because of the inconsistent rushing offense, Herbert and the passing game were put in a fair number of long down-and-distance situations. 

There were the usual late play clocks that have become endemic to McDaniel’s offense, with its wordy play-calls and heavy motions. The Chargers had six offensive penalties and continue to be one of the most penalized offenses in the league. And the execution just wasn’t where it needed to be in the biggest moments. On a potential game-winning drive, Chargers WR Quentin Johnston dropped what would have been a conversion on 3rd-and-10. On 4th-and-10, Herbert was walled into the pocket and had no good options on a pass that sailed incomplete. 

The Bills are going to beat plenty of teams this year, even on days when they don’t play their best football. But this just puts more of an exclamation point on the Chargers’ slow start to the season. At 0-3, the Chargers are all but eliminated from the playoffs. Just seven teams since 1990 have accomplished the feat, and the last time a team that wasn’t the Houston Texans did it was 1998. 

Houston Texans

Speaking of the Texans, Houston is 0-3 for the second straight year after falling to the Colts, 19-17. It’s the third time in four years under HC DeMeco Ryans that Houston was in a pseudo-elimination game, as they started 0-2 in his first season before winning in Week 3. 

In both 2023 and 2025, the Texans went on to make the playoffs. They also rebounded from an 0-3 start in 2018 when Bill O’Brien was coaching and Deshaun Watson was throwing passes. So there’s definitely a sense of “we’ve been here before” around the Texans, and less outward panic despite the slow start. 

Still, the odds are decidedly not in Houston’s favor. 

So far, the Texans have been essentially the same team people expected them to be, except their strengths are not as strong and their weaknesses have been exposed more often. Houston wants to dominate on defense behind a fearsome defensive line that shuts down the run, harasses quarterbacks and creates opportunities for turnovers. On offense, they want to pound teams too with a physical offensive line and ground game with opportunities for shot plays over the top. 

Unfortunately, the running game has had one good game, one average game and one bad game in three times out. The offensive line is still weak in pass protection when it can’t shield itself with play action, and it hasn’t helped that top WR Nico Collins has missed two games with a hamstring injury. 

The bigger surprise might be on defense, though. The Texans pass rush has been as advertised, with four sacks in every game so far. But each opponent — the Bills, the Bengals and the Colts — has been able to absorb the rush and still generate enough big plays to put a winning total of points on the board. In Week 3, Houston picked up a massive sack-fumble that put the offense in position to drive for the go-ahead score. But on Indianapolis’ ensuing possession, they gave up a huge chunk play over the middle of the field, the Colts ground out a few more yards, and the end result was a game-winning 53-yard field goal. 

The Texans’ defense is good. But it’s not at the elite standard that people expected when the team was getting dark horse Super Bowl buzz this preseason. They’re still ironing out some kinks, and at 0-3 there’s no margin for error left. 

Going forward, there are two big boxes to watch out for that the Texans were able to check in previous seasons when they started 0-3. The first is a 5-0 record in the AFC South the rest of the way. The second is a nine-game winning streak. They’ll have some opportunities to string wins with the schedule easing up, but the Jaguars will be a major obstacle in their way when it comes to the division. 

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The nightmarish start to the season continued for the Buccaneers. The Vikings’ defense has put a lot of quarterbacks in hell and it added Baker Mayfield to the list on Sunday. Minnesota sacked Mayfield six times and hit him a bunch of other times. The final one caused a dislocated thumb that’s going to knock Mayfield out for multiple games, if not a stint on injured reserve. 

The next man up? Undrafted rookie QB Jalon Daniels. While he has already exceeded expectations by unseating veteran QB Jake Browning for the primary backup role, the track record for undrafted rookies starting games in the NFL is not strong. There’s a real possibility for Tampa Bay’s season to go off the rails, especially because the defense has been mediocre at best to start the season too. 

The only saving grace for the Buccaneers might be playing in the NFC South, as despite their 0-3 record, they’re still only one game out of first place. Even so, it’s hard to fathom them making up much ground in the coming weeks with how much the deck is stacked against them.