NFL Weekly Update: Week 1

Last Updated on setembro 7, 2026 8:17 pm by Erwin Noguera

The 2026 NFL season opens on a Wednesday, which has not happened since 2012, and it opens with the two teams that finished last season on the field together. Seattle hosts New England seven months after beating them 29-13 in Super Bowl LX, and the defending champions are only 3.5-point favourites in their own building.

Two days later, the league leaves the continent entirely. San Francisco and Los Angeles meet at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in the first NFL regular-season game ever played in Australia: a divisional fixture, decided in front of more than 100,000 people, fifteen hours of flying from home.

The weekend then closes with the two games that will tell us most about the season. Dallas visits the Giants on Sunday night with a rebuilt defence and John Harbaugh making his first regular-season appearance in New York. And on Monday, Patrick Mahomes plays competitive football for the first time since knee surgery, against the team that won the AFC West by multiple games last year.

No Troca de Gambila, você pode explorar todas as previsões para o NFL, as apostas finais para esta jornada e as probabilidades para cada partida.

NFL Week 1 Games

NFL Week 1: Patriots vs. Seahawks

The Super Bowl rematch arrives seven months early, and Seattle are barely favoured. The Seahawks won Super Bowl LX 29-13 for the franchise’s second Lombardi Trophy, and they got there by beating the Rams 31-27 in the NFC Championship: Sam Darnold threw three touchdowns, Kenneth Walker III produced 111 total yards, and Jaxon Smith-Njigba caught ten passes for 153 yards. Mike Macdonald’s defence made the fourth-down stop that ended Los Angeles’s season.

New England arrives having reclaimed the AFC East for the first time since 2019 and having been comprehensively beaten in the final. The market gives Seattle a 62% win probability, which mirrors a real truth about this team: they had the quietest offseason of the genuine contenders, and repeating is the hardest thing in the sport. But opening at home, on a Wednesday night, against the team you already beat on the biggest stage, is the friendliest possible start to a title defence. The 43.5 total is the second-lowest of the week among primetime games, and both defences justify it.

Prediction: Seahawks 24-20 Patriots

NFL Week 1: 49ers vs. Rams

The most unusual game of the season is also one of the most important. Los Angeles are Super Bowl favourites at +500 after signing Myles Garrett, the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, and trading for cornerback Trent McDuffie. They lost the NFC Championship by four points and spent the offseason making sure it does not happen again. It is difficult to find a weakness on this roster.

San Francisco has, when fully healthy, arguably the most talented roster in football, and has not been fully healthy in consecutive seasons since 2019. They travelled with a 200-person party on a fifteen-hour charter and have spent a week acclimatising at the MCG, which is either excellent preparation or an unnecessary variable in Week 1. Nobody can model it. What we can model is a divisional game between a team that just added the best defensive player in the league and one whose availability is the perennial question. Garrett’s first game in a Rams shirt should not be the one where it goes wrong.

Prediction: Rams 27-20 49ers

NFL Week 1: Cowboys vs. Giants

Dallas allowed 30.1 points per game last season, the worst figure in the NFL, while finishing top five in scoring and yards per play. The offence was never the problem, and the entire offseason went into the side that was. People around the league believe the improvement is real, and the preseason supported it: Dallas went 2-0, beat Seattle 17-7 with 338 total yards and 11 of 15 on third down, and routed Arizona 34-13. They also acquired offensive tackle Broderick Jones from Pittsburgh at a low price.

New York got the better coach. John Harbaugh is a significant upgrade, and Malik Nabers is trending toward being available after missing preseason time. The problem is everything around them: all three starting cornerbacks have missed practice, Roy Robertson-Harris tore his Achilles and is out for the year, and centre John Michael Schmitz has been in concussion protocol. Jaxson Dart has been to the medical tent in 43% of his career starts: a number that matters far more when the man snapping him the ball is unavailable. A rebuilt Dallas defence against a young quarterback behind a compromised line is the wrong opening assignment for the Giants.

Prediction: Cowboys 27-20 Giants

NFL Week 1: Broncos vs. Chiefs

The most informative game of the week. Patrick Mahomes plays his first competitive football since suffering a torn ACL and LCL, having thrown no passes at all in the preseason. Andy Reid was right to hold him out, and it leaves Kansas City opening the season with a rebuilt knee behind a right tackle position they never settled: Kahlil Benson was described in preseason as “slow-footed, unsure of himself, and completely overwhelmed”, while the kinder assessment of Jaylon Moore is that he “loses slowly.”

Denver won this division last season by multiple games and went 5-1 within it, behind an elite defence and a quarterback in his third year. The market gives Kansas City only a 55% win probability, and the line sits at 2.5, the narrowest of any game involving a defending division champion this week. That is a lot of respect flowing toward a team whose best player is returning from major knee surgery. We made Denver the best value on the AFC West board at +210, and we are not moving off it in Week 1. Take the points, and take the under while you are there.

Prediction: Broncos 23-20 Chiefs

The Rest of the Slate in One Line

Chargers -9.5 is the largest spread of the week and the most confident the market gets all weekend, giving Justin Herbert an 81% win probability against a rebuilding Arizona. Jaguars -7.5 over Cleveland is the second, at 79%.

Green Bay travel to Minnesota without Micah Parsons, who is on Reserve/PUP for at least four games, and the Vikings are favoured by a point and a half. New Orleans open at Detroit as 7.5-point underdogs with the easiest schedule in football ahead of them. Baltimore begin the Jesse Minter era in Indianapolis, where the Colts had gone 2-12-1 in fifteen season openers before last year. And Atlanta goes to Pittsburgh, still refusing to name a starting quarterback from the four they kept on the roster.