We don’t always get premium matchups on Thursday night football. In fact, more often than not to kick-off the week we’re treated to an epic matchup between the Titans and Panthers (or something to that effect). Maybe Amazon has been talking to Roger Goodell, but this week's TNF matchup is one to get excited about. We’ve got the Green Bay Packers against the Washington Commanders. Both ascending teams. Both have promising Quarterbacks that many believe can work their way into the top 5. Both are on the short list of teams everyone believes can challenge the Eagles for NFC supremacy. This should be a good one, my friends. Here’s what you should be watching for:

(Yahoo Sports)

The full Sunday slate for Week 1 is finally here, and Roger Goodell and his cadre of schedule makers delivered a gem. Eagles-Cowboys and Chiefs-Chargers wet our appetite, but the truth is Week 1’s best matchups will happen on Sunday. Here’s what to watch for as you settle in for your first of 18 Sunday’s nestled in front of your big screen for the NFL season.

The International slate of NFL games kicks off in earnest on Friday September 5th with a showdown of AFC West rivals in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Both the Chiefs and the Chargers have nasty tastes to get out of their mouths from last years’ playoffs as the 2025 regular season kicks off. Everyone remembers the landslide defeat the Chiefs suffered in the Super Bowl to the Champion Eagles, but it’s a little easier to forget about the other side. The last time the Jim Harbaugh led Chargers took the field, they were suffering a 32-12 loss at the hands of the Houston Texans, who weren’t exactly considered juggernauts heading into the AFC playoffs. This matchup will go a long way in determining how the AFC West, a division chalk full of coaching experience, plays out this season.

We know you all love the Field Vision week-to-week power rankings! Well, they are back for our very rendition to kick-off the 2025 season! Not to play spoiler here, but the top of the rankings will look pretty familiar to where we left off in New Orleans last year (We're looking at you, Jalen Hurts). The bottom of the Top 10 gets a little bit fuzzier. Can CJ Stroud shake the sophomore slump in year 3? Do we actually trust JJ McCarthy? Does Jayden Daniels revert to the mean? All questions we're on the edge of our seats to find out! Well - here's goes nothing.

Image: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

In 2021, the NFL only had seven 1,000-yard rushers. That was a historic dip in production, given that an extra game was added to the roster. '21 was the peak of the

Ladd McConkey (Chargers, 54.7)

With the return of the run game and more controlled offenses with reserved play callers, explosive plays come at a high premium. Only a handful of offenses like Minnesota, Detroit, and Philadelphia were able to remain consistent down the field but all featured elite rushing attacks primarily.

As we look back at the 2024 season and the rosters that defined it, we take a look today at the best and worst secondaries according to roster talent this past season. As always, we used our Havoc Ratings which aggregates individual player contributions, so this is more of a commentary on the individual players that make up each unit than how the unit performed together.

When pundits and fans focus on NFL secondaries, the most common position highlighted is the cornerback. For decades, this position has been one of star power. Champ Bailey, Charles Woodson, Darrell Green, Deion, Revis, and Rod Woodson are some of the names that have topped most lists in the last 30 years.

Today's NFL is throwing back to the old days where running backs and linebackers became all the rage, but defensive linemen, especially interior players, have tremendous value. Obviously, edge rushers get all the glory, but the last few years have emphasized the importance of double-team guzzlers. Aaron Donald and Chris Jones added pass rushing abilities to the standard job description of defensive tackles and with the advent of more athleticism in quarterbacks, interior pressure comes at a premium.

The off-ball linebacker is one of the more challenging positions in football to evaluate. As we head towards the NFL draft, there are three consensus top linebackers to choose from: Jihaad Campbell (Alabama), Carson Schwesinger (UCLA), and Jalon Walker (Georgia). Of those three, Campbell and Walker are projected to be first-round selections.

Offense returned in a different way than most were assuming it would in 2024. After an offseason where the running back position was publicly devalued, rushing the ball drove the highest levels of success in both conferences. Efficiency became the name of the game in passing with less attempts for some, but explosiveness is still on the menu.

The first few rounds of NFL free agency are over, and teams are now focusing on Pro Days and last-minute tweaks to their draft boards. One way to create a road map for how teams will approach the NFL Draft is to examine their overall roster pre-free agency, what they did or didn't do to solve those issues, and then project those missing holes into the draft process.

Offenses have been on the downturn statistically, but the emphasis on weapons in 2024 has made the free agency (and draft) moderately interesting. The affordability of some QBs has also diversified the range, but can you find your franchise's linchpin in the open market?

Defensively, 2025 was the year of the DB. Several high-caliber defensive backs switched teams, and a few, including

AFC East

AFC North

AFC West

AFC South

Using Field Vision’s Threat Ratings to examine the best of the best offensive weapons from the 2024 season.

Using Field Vision's Havoc Ratings, let's reflect on who had the best-performing units during the 2024 season.

Threat and Havoc measure more in depth than generic stats possibly could by linking production and proven value. Some players with gaudier numbers don't serve as effective a purpose as a seemingly innocuous cog in the machine. The nature of Havoc and Threat is the ability to ignore the narratives of how good a player is or isn't and look strictly at production. Here, we take a look at either end of the spectrum at players who produced better or worse than you may have thought.

Here's what to watch for when each team has the ball.

With just one game being played, the number of bets available are severely limited with just two teams playing. Though the Chiefs and Eagles roster plenty of players that offer masses of monetary value, the outer edges of the gambling sites present some of the most distinct and specific wagers only the Big Game could even attempt to tease.

The Chiefs and Eagles have some of the top football minds employed on their coaching staffs. Kansas City has Andy Reid, a future Hall of Fame head coach, self-proclaimed football historian, and nerd. Reid will watch games from decades past or even high school programs to steal ideas from.

Championship weekend came and went and we saw a multitude of great individual performances in each game. We’ve got 8 days to look ahead at the Super Bowl, but before we get to that, let’s take a moment to look at some of the best performances from Championship weekend and how it will shape the Super Bowl Matchup. In the spirit of keeping the ball moving forward, we’ll focus on performances from players on the winning teams. We’ll break down one player from each position group except the offensive line(sorry big uglies) that had a great Championship game performance and will be competing in Super Bowl LIX.

At Field Vision Sports, our conversations frequently tumble back into schemes and tendencies that coaches and coordinators deploy on Sundays. Ben Johnson just “schemed” himself into a job with one of the cornerstone franchises in the NFL. Frequently, skill players will sign with a brand-new team in free agency and expect comparably excellent statistics in their new digs but melt when the new OC has different plans. Each and every Sunday, we see similarly constructed teams defeated the teams of the other ilk, poorly constructed teams.

Bills vs. Chiefs

As conference Championship games approach, Field Vision is unveiling our Season awards. These are the biggest awards that will be given out at NFL Honors in a few weeks and we got together as a staff to give you our take on them. We chose our winners with a slant towards our analytics, but it was not exclusively based on statistical measures or our Havoc and Threat Ratings that we know you’ve all grown to love this season. Without further ado, here are the prestigious winners of Field Vision’s End of Season Awards:

Ladies and gentlemen, here we are in heaven.

Saturday Slate

With the NFL All-Pro Team released earlier this week, it’s time for Field Vision to take a look at our All-Havoc team for 2024. Remember, Havoc is a proprietary metric developed at Field Vision that measures the value of a player’s contribution to their team relative to their position group. For more on how Havoc is measured and was developed, you can read Scott Bouska’s article