Pittsburgh beat Atlanta 20-13 at Acrisure, and the most efficient scoring play of the day was T.J. Watt intercepting Cooper Rush and running it back 35 yards.
The Steelers gained 264 yards. The Falcons gained 238. Between them they missed three field goals, threw two interceptions, lost two fumbles and committed 16 penalties for 148 yards. Pittsburgh's running game produced 58 yards on 21 carries.
It was not a good football game, and the fantasy reading depends almost entirely on how much you're willing to blame the circumstances.
The Rodgers and McCarthy reunion is not the Green Bay one
Aaron Rodgers is 42 and in his 22nd NFL season. Mike McCarthy is coaching a third franchise. Whatever the phrase "Rodgers and McCarthy back together" conjures, this isn't that, and Sunday made the point.
Rodgers went 24 of 41 for 221 yards with a touchdown and no interceptions, an 81.5 rating, and 4.8 yards an attempt. He was charted with eight poor throws.
Pittsburgh's own coverage makes a reasonable case that the box score is harsh. There were drops, there were penalties, and there was a missed pass interference call on DK Metcalf that could have been a touchdown. Rodgers protected the ball and looked comfortable, and a cleaner afternoon puts him well over 300.
But the version of this that shows up in the standings is 264 total yards and 20 points against a team starting its third quarterback. Mediocre is the right word, and the good news for anyone who rostered him is that nobody expected more.
The postgame moment was genuine, at least. Rodgers gave McCarthy the game ball for his first win in Pittsburgh, a place McCarthy grew up across the river from and still has family in.
The Steelers offense is hard to find a bright spot in
Twenty-one carries for 58 yards. Two point eight a carry. Zero rushing touchdowns.
Jaylen Warren fumbled a swing pass that Atlanta recovered in field goal range. Rico Dowdle couldn't convert a third down early. The run game never threatened.
Metcalf was the bigger disappointment. He came off the injury report less than a week before the opener after missing the last stretch of camp with an undisclosed issue, and he spent Sunday mostly as a nine-yard-gain guy. He did get interfered with on a would-be touchdown that wasn't called, which is a real thing that happened and also not something you can put in a lineup.
Context on why that matters. Metcalf's first season in Pittsburgh produced 59 catches for 850 yards and six touchdowns, down from what he'd been in Seattle. Week 1 didn't suggest the second year fixes it.
Michael Pittman Jr. was probably the closest thing to a positive, with a 21-yarder that was Rodgers' most productive throw of the early going. It wasn't a big line and Pittman isn't a player you're starting off it, but he was involved and he caught what came to him.
Pat Freiermuth caught the six-yard touchdown, which was Pittsburgh's only offensive score.
That's the whole list. One touchdown from a tight end, a modest day from a receiver Pittsburgh acquired this offseason, and 58 rushing yards.
Atlanta's quarterback situation was a disaster before kickoff
Tua Tagovailoa suffered an oblique injury in Thursday's practice. Michael Penix Jr. was already unavailable. That left Cooper Rush, who got two practice days and a walk-through, and then developed back spasms on Saturday.
He went 12 of 22 for 143 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions. A 51.9 rating.
Here's the number that captures it. Atlanta generated 25 air yards across 22 pass attempts. Twenty-five. A hundred and eighteen of their 143 receiving yards came after the catch, which means this was an offense throwing at or behind the line and hoping somebody made somebody miss.
They had zero red zone pass attempts and zero red zone rush attempts. They never got there.
Kevin Stefanski's first game as head coach was a quarterback he'd had for three days handing off and throwing screens against a defense that knew it.
Bijan was the whole offense, and that's the nuance
Twenty-one carries for 83 yards, eight catches for 90 and a 23-yard receiving touchdown. Twenty-nine touches, 173 scrimmage yards.
That's a good fantasy day, and it's worth separating from the impression the game left.
The rushing is where he was contained. Four yards a carry from a back who averaged 5.3 last season is the Steelers loading the box against an offense that couldn't punish them for it. Brian Robinson Jr. added nine carries for 31, so the ground game as a whole went nowhere.
The receiving is what saved it, and it says something uncomfortable. Ninety of Atlanta's 143 passing yards went to Bijan on dump-offs. He wasn't being schemed open downfield, he was the checkdown on an offense that had no other option, and he turned that into 90 yards because he's the best player on the field regardless of how the ball gets to him.
He also fumbled twice and recovered both.
Last season Bijan led the NFL in scrimmage yards and made first-team All-Pro with a franchise-record total. He's a top-two fantasy back and Sunday didn't change that. What Sunday showed is that even in the worst possible offensive environment, with a third-string quarterback and a stacked box, he still produced 173 yards. That's the argument for him rather than against him.
London and Pitts couldn't do anything about it
Drake London caught two passes for 29 yards, which led all Atlanta receivers. Olamide Zaccheaus added one for five.
Kyle Pitts had a shot down the seam that Jalen Ramsey broke up on a throw that was there, and another where a good pass scores. He was open. The ball didn't arrive.
There's nothing to analyze about either player from this game. You can't throw it to yourself. London is a legitimate number one receiver and Pitts is a matchup problem when anybody gets him the ball, and on Sunday Atlanta had 25 air yards to distribute.
The honest read is that this tells you almost nothing about them and almost everything about the quarterback position.
What it actually means going forward
Here's where I'd be careful.
The temptation is to write this off entirely and wait for Tua. I wouldn't count on that solving it. Tua's recent history is a run of injuries and an offense that has needed a lot of structure around him, and Penix has his own availability questions. Atlanta's skill players are as talented as any group in the league, and Sunday was a reminder of how completely their fantasy value depends on somebody competent throwing the football.
That's not a panic take. It's a dependency to be aware of. Bijan is insulated because he gets 29 touches regardless. London and Pitts are not, and their weekly range is going to swing on who's under center in a way that most receivers of their caliber don't have to deal with.
For Pittsburgh, the read is simpler. This is a defense-first team with a 42-year-old quarterback and a running game that averaged 2.8. Watt and Brisker produced the takeaways, Boswell kicked, and the offense did just enough. Nothing in that group projects as a weekly fantasy asset right now.
Atlanta travels to Minnesota and Pittsburgh goes to New England. Both offenses need to show something before anybody should trust them.