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Thanks to the Kansas City Chiefs and Denver Broncos combining for 41 points on Monday night, the opening slate of games for the 2026 season has officially tied the 2012 season's record for the most Week 1 points scored (791) during the Super Bowl era.
Entering Monday's AFC West showdown, teams had averaged 50.0 combined points per game, per NFL Research, with the Week 1 finale bringing the average down to 49.4.
Tying such a mark would've been hard to see coming on Wednesday, when the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots kicked off the campaign with a 13-10 defensive battle in a Super Bowl LX rematch.
Much of the rest of the weekend, however, took a different path.
Offensive explosions proved the norm. Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears dropped 59 points on the Carolina Panthers, the franchise's most since the 1980 season, and it's not as if Carolina's offense was hapless attempting to keep up. The Panthers put 37 on the board, contributing to the highest-scoring Week 1 game (96 combined points) in league history.
Lamar Jackson 's Baltimore Ravens scored 41 against the Indianapolis Colts, while Josh Allen 's Buffalo Bills required a similar output to defeat the Houston Texans, 36-31 , a somewhat shocking result, considering DeMeco Ryans' club hasn't allowed that many points since his first year leading Houston in 2023.
The Jacksonville Jaguars opened a large enough lead that Trevor Lawrence sat out the fourth quarter of a 34-10 win over the Cleveland Browns, and the Minnesota Vikings, who defeated the Green Bay Packers, 39-22 , at one point scored 22 points in 2:46 of game time during the fourth quarter.
The NFL's scoring frenzy stands in stark contrast to the commonly held belief that defenses typically begin the season ahead of offenses.
It was not so this week, leading to record-tying results.
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