Two weeks and one Thursday night into the 2026 season, the NFL has already done what it does every September: made a bunch of confident preseason takes look silly. Some of these starts will fade by Halloween. A few won't. Here's what has actually surprised me so far, and how I'd move teams on the NFL Teams Tier List 2026 right now.
The Raiders are 2-0 and nobody saw it coming
Las Vegas was supposed to be a rebuild year. New head coach Klint Kubiak, a rookie franchise quarterback in Fernando Mendoza waiting in the wings, and Kirk Cousins keeping the seat warm. That's the recipe for a team that's fun in 2027, not one that's winning now.
Instead, the Raiders beat Miami and then handled the Chargers 26-14, with Cousins throwing three touchdowns and the defense forcing multiple turnovers. It's their first 2-0 start since 2021. They've done it without Brock Bowers, too, which makes it more impressive, not less.
I'm not ready to call them a playoff team. Miami looks like one of the worst rosters in football, and the Chargers are a mess (more on that in a second). But the reports out of Vegas say there's "no rush" to hand Mendoza the keys, and honestly, why would there be? If you had the Raiders in your bottom tier, it's time to bump them up a row.
The Chargers can't get out of their own way
This is the flip side of that Raiders game. Los Angeles opened with back-to-back 26-14 losses, first to Arizona and then to Las Vegas. Through two games they'd scored 28 points total, turned it over five times, and piled up 15 penalties. Justin Herbert is completing 59 percent of his passes with three picks, and the Mike McDaniel offense hasn't looked anything like the version we saw in Miami.
Herbert snapped back at a question about leadership this week, which tells you how tense it's getting. And the schedule doesn't help: next up is a trip to Buffalo. Plenty of us had the Chargers as a solid A-tier team in the summer. Right now they belong somewhere in the middle, and another loss would drop them lower.
Buffalo rolls, and a few other results that matter
Not every surprise is a shock. Some are just a team being even better than expected. The Bills christened their new $2.1 billion Highmark Stadium with a 41-31 win over Detroit on a Thursday night, and Josh Allen threw three touchdowns and ran for two more. That's the fourth five-touchdown game of his career. Only two teams in NFL history have scored more in a regular-season stadium debut.
Buffalo sits at the top of several power rankings, and Allen has been averaging close to 10 yards per pass attempt. If your tier list doesn't have them in S tier, I'd love to hear the argument.
A few other results that should move the needle:
- The Saints stole one in Baltimore, 24-17. Tyler Shough led two fourth-quarter touchdown drives, including a go-ahead sneak with 1:28 left, and Julian Blackmon picked off Lamar Jackson to seal it. New Orleans still has flaws, but that's a real win.
- The Falcons, who started 0-2, went into Lambeau on Thursday and beat Green Bay 35-14. Bijan Robinson ran for 194 yards and two scores on 29 carries, and the Packers managed just 17 rushing yards as a team.
- The Giants lost Jaxson Dart for the season. He hurt his knee on the first drive against the Rams in Week 2, and John Harbaugh confirmed he needs surgery. Jameis Winston is expected to take over, which changes the ceiling for this team a lot.
What it means for the tier list
Here's where I'd land after all this. Buffalo stays locked in S tier, and there's a real case that nobody else belongs there yet. The Raiders move up out of the basement but stay short of the contenders until they beat someone good. The Chargers slide down to the middle tiers. The Giants take the biggest fall, because losing your young starting quarterback in September is about as bad as it gets. Atlanta and New Orleans both earn a small bump, and Green Bay gets knocked down a notch until that offensive line gets healthy.
The usual warning applies. Two games is a tiny sample, and September records lie all the time. A soft early schedule can make a mediocre team look great, and an injury or two can make a good team look lost. That's exactly why a tier list is more fun than a straight ranking right now: you can admit you're not sure and still put teams in the right neighborhood.
So where do you have them? Head over to the NFL Teams Tier List 2026 and make your own ranking, then tell us which team everyone is still sleeping on.
