Last season ended with a Super Bowl in which neither team – the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots – had been expected to participate. Before that, we had a 44-year-old grandfather returning from a four-season layoff to give the Indianapolis Colts unexpected cheer in an otherwise miserable season, while the Chicago Bears and Jacksonville Jaguars rebounded from bad 2024 seasons to win their divisions.
It’s early to state which surprises will be the most fun to recall this time around, but here are four to watch as things progress.
Brock Purdy playing at an MVP level
Under an obscure Santa Clara bylaw, we are legally obliged to point out that Purdy has outplayed his status as the last pick in the 2022 draft. But last season, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback was caught up in his team’s horrible injury luck (which continues unabated), missing eight games. Purdy still played well when healthy, but nobody was quite prepared for how good he has been in 2026.
The 49ers are 3-0 despite all the injury hits, and Purdy is the primary reason. He has completed 60 of 83 passes (72.3%) for 789 yards (9.5 yards per attempt), nine touchdowns, one interception, no sacks, and a passer rating of 133.1, which leads the league quite comfortably (in second place is Drew Lock, more on which later).
Moreover, Purdy is doing all of this without the superhuman traits attributed to the likes of Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen. He’s a decent runner, has an above-average arm, and moves well in the pocket, but Purdy is really beating opponents with his mind. He’s reading defenses like they’re first-day third-grade stuff, and his ability to throw with anticipation (“throwing his receivers open” in football parlance) is unmatched. No matter who’s healthy enough to block for him or catch his passes, the big plays are coming in bunches.
It’s why everyone is on the Purdy bandwagon right now, and as long as he can avoid the Substation Curse, that should continue.
Backup quarterbacks saving games for teams in need
It’s not just starting quarterbacks who are making things better for their injury-ravaged teams. 2026 has already been a banner year for backups too.
The defending champion Seattle Seahawks lost starter Sam Darnold five plays into the new season when he suffered a glute injury. Backup Drew Lock, who has rarely resembled a starting-level quarterback in an NFL career that goes back to 2019, turned himself into exactly that in Weeks 1 and 2. The Seahawks beat the New England Patriots and the Arizona Cardinals with Lock, who completed 35 of 48 passes (72.9%) for 422 yards (8.8 YPA), four touchdowns, no interceptions, and a league-high passer rating of 127.3 – yes, even higher than Purdy’s 125.6 through those two games.
Marcus Mariota helped his team to a shock win over the Super Bowl champions. Photograph: Nick Wass/AP
Darnold returned to the field for Seattle’s Week 3 game against the Washington Commanders, but the Seahawks ran into another example of this phenomenon when they were upended by Marcus Mariota. Starter Jayden Daniels suffered a dislocated left elbow in Week 2 against the Dallas Cowboys, and Mariota was back – he had started eight games for the Commanders in 2025 when Daniels had a similar elbow injury – but he had never played like this. In Washington’s shock 33-31 win over Seattle, Mariota completed 19 of 31 passes (61.3%) for 183 yards (5.9 YPA), three touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 110.0. Not quite as impressive until you consider that from Week 1 of the 2025 season to Week 2 of the 2026 season, Seattle’s defense had allowed a cumulative passer rating of 77.8.
Still, it was up to the Chicago Bears’ Case Keenum to write the ultimate backup story of the new season. Against the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night, Chicago’s 38-year-old third-stringer (behind injured starter Caleb Williams and ostensible No. 2 man Tyson Bagent) completed 24 of 34 passes (70.6%) for 247 yards (7.3 YPA), two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 110.8.
Not bad for a guy who hadn’t started an NFL game since December 2023, when he was with the Houston Texans. Most delightfully, Keenum had his family at Soldier Field, which led to a fascinating discussion about whether Keenum’s kids would prefer to watch game highlights on Tuesday or revert to their usual staple, Bluey.
We’re guessing it was a mixture of the two.
The Las Vegas Raiders
The Raiders haven’t made the playoffs since the 2021 season, their second in Las Vegas. Before that, they hadn’t made the playoffs since the 2016 season, when they were the Oakland Raiders. And the franchise hasn’t actually won a playoff game since the 2002 season, seven years after they moved back to Oakland from Los Angeles.
No matter where they are, the Raiders have been hapless for most of this century. But, based on the early returns with new head coach Klint Kubiak, that could be about to change. Kubiak’s new Raiders are one of five undefeated teams remaining (the Buffalo Bills, Kansas City Chiefs, Minnesota Vikings, and the 49ers are the others), and they’re getting it done on both sides of the ball. And we haven’t even seen Fernando Mendoza, the first overall pick in the 2026 draft, on the field for the Raiders yet, because veteran Kirk Cousins is playing at such an unexpectedly high level.
The Raiders rank ninth in DVOA, FTN’s efficiency metric, after ranking 31st in 2025. They’ve already won as many games as they did last season, and between Kubiak’s brilliance as an offensive playcaller and what defensive coordinator Rob Leonard has done with a bunch of relative no-names (edge-rusher Maxx Crosby excepted), few teams are benefiting from better coaching than the Raiders right now.
When was the last time anybody could say that? Kubiak is only the third coach in franchise history to start his first season 3-0. Before him, there was Bill Callahan in 2002, and the legendary John Madden in 1969.
Of course, we don’t actually know what Kubiak’s Raiders will do over time. It could go either way. Callahan lasted just two seasons with the team after he followed a Super Bowl XXXVII appearance with a 4-12 season in 2003, while Madden was one of the most successful NFL coaches ever. But as things stand right now, Kubiak is coaching his guys as well as anybody in the league.
The Minnesota Vikings’ unconventional defense
Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores is absolutely one of one. While most coaches prefer to treat blitzing opposing quarterbacks as if it’s something to pull out of the quiver in obvious passing situations, Flores prefers to make the entire plane out of the black box.
The former Bill Belichick assistant in New England, who was also the Miami Dolphins’ head coach from 2019 to 2021, is going to do things his way, and it generally works. Since he became the Vikings’ DC in 2023, Flores’s defenses have led the NFL in blitz rate every season, and they’re topping out at an insane 66.4% so far in 2026.
How far off the grid is that? The Chicago Bears rank second in blitz rate… at 39.8%.
So, why don’t more coaches blitz more often? Because when you send extra defenders after the quarterback, said quarterback can exploit the obvious openings in coverage. But Flores has answers for that as well. The Vikings have also led the league every year since 2023 in simulated pressures, in which a defense looks like it’s going to blitz, and then several defenders drop into coverage post-snap.
So, you wind up with a playbook in which the Vikings are generally among the top of the NFL in both six-man-or-more rushes, and three-man-or-fewer rushes.
In less capable hands, that kind of binary approach wouldn’t work as well – not only because opposing coaches would figure out how to attack it, but also because few other defensive coaches have Flores’s understanding of what his players do well, and how best to utilize them. The Vikings’ roster is filled with players who embrace Flores’s approach wholeheartedly, because they love it, and because it works.
The Vikings have the NFL’s best defense per DVOA by a comfortable margin, and the team would be even more of a juggernaut if their offense didn’t rank 30th. As brilliant as he is, Flores isn’t able to manufacture a quarterback for head coach Kevin O’Connell. Flores is more of a quarterback destroyer than a quarterback creator.