Week 3 is here to let us know that basically everything we said after Week 1 and Week 2 was indeed an overreaction.

The Vikings crushed the Texans. The Broncos crushed the Buccaneers — in Tampa Bay. Malik Willis threw two touchdown passes and ran for another score as the Packers improved to 2-0 without Jordan Love. The Saints saw their per-game scoring average drop from 45.5 to 34.3. Aaron Rodgers looked like a spry 31-year-old. And the Rams came back from a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter without any receivers to beat the 49ers.

Surprises and upsets were the order of the day in Week 3, reminding us that it’s still so early in the 2024 NFL season that nobody really knows anything. But if you think that’s going to stop us from overreacting, well … then you’re the one who’s overreacting. Let’s judge a few potential takeaways from the weekend’s games as legitimate or irrational.

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Bears regret for Caleb over Fields?
Nabers saving Jones’ future in N.Y.?
Time for Maye in New England?
Young completely finished for Carolina?
Eagles to win the NFC East?

Remember three weeks ago, when the Steelers named Russell Wilson their starting quarterback ahead of Fields? Well, Wilson has still never taken a single snap as a Steeler. He injured a calf in practice ahead of Week 1, and Fields has started all three games. The Steelers have won all three of those games, and Fields has played a bit better each week. On Sunday, Pittsburgh held off the Chargers 20-10 in its home opener. Fields was 25-for-32 for 245 yards and one touchdown with one interception, and he also rushed for a score.

Meanwhile, the Bears — who traded Fields to the Steelers once they decided to use the No. 1 pick on Williams — fell to 1-2 with a 21-16 loss to the Colts in Indianapolis. Williams finally threw his first career NFL touchdown pass (and his second). But he also threw two interceptions, took four sacks and needed to throw the ball 52 times to compile 363 yards. He was 4-of-14 on passes thrown 15 or more yards downfield, per ESPN Research, after going 0-for-11 on such throws in his first two games. The Bears’ offense has looked stuck in the mud since the season started, and the fans who wanted Fields to stay are surely getting restless.

Verdict: OVERREACTION

It’s three games! Fields played 40 games for the Bears before they decided to move on from him and draft Williams. Sure, the rookie and his offense in Chicago have not looked good. But in fairness, how good has the Steelers’ offense really looked? Pittsburgh is averaging 17 points per game. Full credit to coach Mike Tomlin, offensive coordinator Arthur Smith and the rest of the Steelers’ coaching staff for putting Fields in a position to succeed, executing some do-no-harm game plans and leaning on an excellent T.J. Watt-led defense to propel them to a 3-0 start. And kudos to Fields for making the improvements he needed to make in his game while the Steelers spent the whole spring and summer telling everyone Wilson was the starter.

But three weeks is nowhere near enough time on which to base a judgment like this. Williams is taking his lumps, as Fields did early in his career. If Williams is still taking lumps like this next season and the season after, then we’ll be able to say they might have made a mistake. At this point, if you thought Williams was going to be a good NFL quarterback, you haven’t seen enough to make you give up on that opinion.

The Giants’ first-round rookie wide receiver enjoyed another brilliant outing in his team’s victory over the Browns. Nabers had eight catches for 78 yards and two touchdowns in what turned out to be Jones’ best game of the season. The Giants like giving the ball to Nabers so much that they gave him two rushing attempts and also let him throw a pass. (It was incomplete.) Sunday’s performance only built off of the 10-catch, 127-yard, one-touchdown day Nabers had against Washington in Week 2.

Nabers is electrifying. He is acrobatic. He is rightly the focal point of the Giants’ offense and the most exciting player they’ve had since the early days of Odell Beckham Jr. The Giants drafted Nabers with the sixth pick in hopes he would provide Jones with the kind of wideout he’d yet to play with in the first five years of his NFL career, and the early returns indicate they might have been right.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION

I know it might not be what the anti-Jones faction of the Giants’ fan base wants to hear, but there is absolutely a world in which Jones is still the Giants’ quarterback in 2025. He is under contract for $30.5 million next year, which is a steal for a starting quarterback in the current NFL. That money isn’t guaranteed, and the Giants could easily move on from him and onto another option next spring. And they still might. But what if the Jones-Nabers connection keeps flowering and helps them win a few games?

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Malik Nabers catches 2 TD passes from Daniel Jones in Giants’ win

Daniel Jones connects with Malik Nabers twice with less than two minutes to play in the first half for the Giants.

Nobody saw the Giants’ 2022 playoff appearance coming at this point two years ago, but Jones and Brian Daboll are the same quarterback-coach combination that delivered them to the second round of the postseason during that campaign. It wasn’t that long ago, and they didn’t have anything in the passing game that looked like Nabers. I’m not going to sit here and tell you it’s a sure thing Jones is back next season. But stranger things have happened, and Nabers looks special enough to help those around him surpass expectations.

It’s already time for the Patriots to start Drake Maye

New England’s offense opened Week 3 with a lifeless performance against the Jets on Thursday night. After a surprise victory over the Bengals in Week 1, the Pats have lost two in a row, and they looked noncompetitive against the Jets’ (admittedly very tough) defense. They managed just 139 total yards of offense. Jacoby Brissett was 12-for-18 for 98 yards. Maye actually came in toward the end and made his NFL debut, completing 4 of 8 passes for 22 yards in garbage time.

Maye showed more promise and dynamism in the preseason than Brissett, but the Patriots wanted to open the season with Brissett as the starter so as not to rush Maye into action too soon and risk botching his development. It was sound logic, but the way it’s going makes you wonder how long they’ll last before switching to a younger QB who looks like he might be a more effective option.

Verdict: OVERREACTION

If you watched Thursday’s game, you might have noticed that the Patriots’ offensive line is playing like a wet Kleenex. Brissett took five sacks while he was in there, and Maye took two in his brief stint. New England’s O-line came into the season with question marks, and it has lost several key players to injury since then.

One of the reasons the Patriots went with Brissett was because they worried about playing Maye behind a suspect line and having him experience too much early-career negativity that didn’t have anything to do with him. And they’re right. More young quarterbacks get ruined than made in this league, and the Pats took Maye with the third pick believing he would be their long-term franchise QB. They can’t risk a situation in which his confidence gets shattered in his first season, and they should resist the temptation to play him over Brissett until the group around him looks at least a little bit more reliable.

Bryce Young has started his final game for the Panthers

The NFL news of the past week was Carolina’s benching of Young — the No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft — two games into his second season. As poorly as Young has played, the news still struck many (including Young) as a surprise. The move was panned as the latest act of impatience by a franchise that seems to lurch from plan to plan and never appears to find the right one. But what no one can argue with is how much better the Panthers’ offense looked Sunday with Andy Dalton at quarterback.

Dalton brought high-profile offseason addition Diontae Johnson to life and led three first-half touchdown drives to build a 21-7 halftime lead en route to a 36-22 victory in Las Vegas. Dalton’s performance made him the first quarterback in the league this season to throw for 300 yards and three touchdowns in a game. With Young at quarterback, the Panthers scored a total of 13 points in their first two games this season. (Both were obviously losses; I mean, they’re not the Steelers.) With Dalton, they surpassed that total in the first 21 minutes of Sunday’s game.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION

What’s the path back for Young? Sure, there’s ample evidence that the Panthers under David Tepper’s ownership don’t know what they’re doing, and the constant changing of coaches couldn’t have helped Young’s development. But Young was the top pick in the draft and frankly was repeating too many of the same mistakes and didn’t appear to be developing. Benching him was not an objectively bad decision. It’s just that the timing of it makes it difficult to see how the Panthers can go back to him.

In one week, Dalton made this look like a legitimately good NFL offense, whereas with Young, it was absolutely the worst. If Dalton keeps playing well and Carolina actually wins some games, how can the coaching staff look the rest of the roster in the eyes and say it is going back to Young just because he’s the future. He’s not — not anymore. Barring an injury to Dalton, I say there’s a better chance that Young gets traded before the deadline (or in the offseason) than he starts again for the Panthers.

The Eagles will win the NFC East

The award for toughest performance of Week 3 goes to the Eagles, who didn’t score in the first three quarters but still came back without their top two wide receivers and two starting offensive linemen to steal a 15-12 victory over the previously unstoppable Saints in New Orleans. According to ESPN Research, it was the first time the Eagles scored zero points in the first three quarters of a game and won since 2000.

Jalen Hurts, still struggling with turnovers, faced a third-and-16 in the final minutes and hit tight end Dallas Goedert for a 61-yard completion that set up Saquon Barkley‘s go-ahead touchdown. Philadelphia’s defensive line, which had been pushed around by the Packers and the Falcons in Weeks 1 and 2, dominated the Saints’ offensive line and lived in the backfield all day, harassing Derek Carr and stifling an offense that put up 91 points in its first two games.

The Eagles might still have some stuff to work on, and they have a ton of offensive injuries to overcome ahead of a Week 4 game in Tampa Bay. But they’re 2-1 and in sole possession of first place in the NFC East (pending Washington’s result against Cincinnati on Monday night). If they made one more play at the end against Atlanta, the Eagles would be 3-0. Most of the teams who are struggling early would trade for Philly’s problems.

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Dallas Goedert’s 61-yard catch sets up Saquon Barkley’s go-ahead TD

Dallas Goedert catches a 61-yard pass and Saquon Barkley capitalizes on it with a 2-yard touchdown run to give the Eagles the late lead.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION

Meanwhile, the Cowboys were getting absolutely run over at home by the Ravens on Sunday before their blistering fourth-quarter comeback attempt fell just short. Dallas lost its second straight home game to fall to 1-2, and it has some issues to work out on the defensive side of the ball. Per ESPN Research, the Cowboys’ 557 rushing yards allowed are the most for that franchise through three games since 1963. The Giants, meanwhile, played a nice game but probably aren’t a real threat unless this is one of those NFC East seasons when it only takes eight or nine wins to be division champ. (Those happen!) And Washington is still finding its way with rookie Jayden Daniels at quarterback.

The race, if there is one, likely shapes up as the Eagles vs. the Cowboys. No team has won the NFC East in consecutive campaigns since 2003 and 2004, and the Cowboys won it last season — so the rules say they can’t win it this year. Philly has a bye coming up in Week 5 that could help it with its health issues. And if the Eagles can get A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith and Lane Johnson back on the field sometime soon, they should be in position to return to the top of the division.