Welcome to Week 3 of The First Read. Let’s get right into it.

For the third time in four years, the San Francisco 49ers are 3-0. They’ve done this by, unsurprisingly, putting together one of the league’s best offenses. The 49ers have scored 3.63 points per drive this season, which is the third-highest rate for a team over the first three weeks of a season since 2020, behind the 2020 Packers (3.77) and 2025 Colts (3.69).

Through three weeks, Brock Purdy leads all quarterbacks in EPA per play and success rate by a wide margin. He has the two best single-game EPA per play performances this season — 1.09 against the Dolphins in Week 2 and 0.83 against the Cardinals in Week 3.

Since 2020, only Josh Allen in 2024 had higher EPA per play during the first three weeks of the season. Purdy has become the best evolution of the Shanahan quarterback. He’s always been more aggressive than Jimmy Garoppolo, but now he’s mastered the intricacies of the system that allows him to trust everything he’s seeing on the field.

This Niners offense is doing everything we expected coming into the season. San Francisco is first in offensive EPA per play and leads the league in explosive play rate. A league-low 29.8% of the 49ers’ third downs have needed seven or more yards to convert, and because of that, they have a league-best 63% third-down conversion rate. Though against Arizona, five of San Francisco’s eight third downs were considered long, but the 49ers averaged 1.79 EPA per play on third down — with the 80-yard hook-and-ladder touchdown from Mike Evans to Deebo Samuel on a third-and-12 (+7.9 EPA) doing some heavy lifting.

The defense is getting by. San Francisco is 20th in EPA per play and 29th in pressure rate through three weeks. Jacoby Brissett was only pressured on 18.9% of his dropbacks in Week 3 and that lack of pressure helped the Cardinals keep the game close in the second half. The 49ers gave up three scoring drives in the fourth quarter, but the offense scored two touchdowns of their own to stay ahead.

In a vacuum, there are few reasons to believe this couldn’t continue. The 49ers, of course, aren’t playing in a vacuum — they’re playing in the NFL’s version of Final Destination. San Francisco already has 15 players on injured reserve, including receivers Ricky Pearsall, Christian Kirk, De’Zhaun Stribling, and Demarcus Robinson.

Nick Bosa injured his calf in practice this past week, and the 49ers avoided placing him on injured reserve, partly because the Niners are running out of IR spots, Adam Schefter reported this week. The spots taken up on injured reserve also don’t include Mykell Williams, who started the season on the Physically Unable to Perform list.

During the game against the Cardinals, the 49ers lost Mike Evans, Trent Williams, and Dre Greenlaw. The order appears to be by severity. Greenlaw injured his quad in the fourth quarter and attempted to come back into the game but lasted just one snap. Williams left with a shoulder stinger, but the injury doesn’t appear to be serious. Evans was carted off with a rib injury and Kyle Shanahan said more details will be known on Monday.

On plays without Evans on the field in Week 3, George Kittle had a 46.7% target share. Kittle is an incredible player, but he turns 33 years old next week and is coming off a torn Achilles. The number of 49ers the team can feel good about staying healthy might be in the single digits. The team just signed Brandin Cooks for receiving depth. How bad do things need to become for the Niners and Brandon Aiyuk to make miraculous amends? (To be fair, you, reader, might be starting games at wide receiver before there’s an Aiyuk return, but it’s worth mentioning.)

This is nothing new for the 49ers. San Francisco was 28th in adjusted games lost last season and 32nd in 2024. The Niners were 6-11 in 2024, but bounced back to 12-5 in 2025. At 3-0, the 49ers have built themselves a nice margin for error, but there will eventually be a breaking point. Will San Francisco hit it? That’s yet to be determined. Last year’s 49ers got the benefit of one of the league’s easiest schedules. By DVOA, they have the 11th toughest schedule from Week 4 on.

One of these years, we’re going to see what the 49ers can do without dealing with injuries. But for another season, we need to see how well they can manage them.

Aside from the 49ers, there are four other 3-0 teams — Monday night and the 2-0 Philadelphia Eagles pending. Since the playoffs expanded in 2021, 16 of 21 3-0 teams made the playoffs. Last season, four of the six made it, with the Colts and Buccaneers missing out. 

Buffalo Bills

The Bills, the best team during the season’s opening two weeks, might have been the luckiest team to get out of Week 3 undefeated. Buffalo turned the ball over five times with two interceptions and three lost fumbles but still managed a 24-16 win over the Chargers.

Buffalo kept the game close, thanks partly to some questionable decision-making from Los Angeles. The Chargers attempted two short field goals — and missed one — that prevented them from pulling away in the first half. The Bills kept things going on the ground against a Chargers run defense that had been the bright spot of the team over the first two weeks. Buffalo finished with 0.10 EPA per rush, which was the fourth-highest mark in the league in Week 3.

Just two of Buffalo’s rushing attempts were stopped at or behind the line of scrimmage. For the season, only 3.4% of James Cook’s rushes have been stopped at or behind the line of scrimmage. The running game is now a fail-safe option that can be used to keep the offense afloat. That’s such a change from Josh Allen’s early years and with the explosive passing game sprinkled back in, it gives the Bills one of the more well-rounded and complete offenses in the league.

Kansas City Chiefs

Speaking of teams that have relied on the run game — Kenneth Walker is everything the Chiefs could have hoped for and more through the opening three weeks. Walker leads the league in rushing yards and his 50.8% success rate on the ground is fourth among 31 running backs with at least 30 carries. As a team, the Chiefs are second in success rate on running back carries at 49.4%. 

Walker still had a 50% success rate in Week 3 despite 38.9% of his runs getting stuffed at or behind the line of scrimmage. Over the first two weeks of the season, Walker had more rushes into stacked boxes and those can create more explosive runs when they break through into the second level. He ranks fourth among those qualified backs in average number of defenders in the box per rush (7.77). But against Miami, just 38% of his runs were into stacked boxes and he created successful runs with moderate gains against that spacing.

With the run game as a legitimate weapon, the passing game has had time to find a rhythm. After a concerning opening game, Patrick Mahomes has been incredibly efficient by getting the ball out quickly. He averaged 0.43 EPA per play against the Dolphins after 0.31 against the Colts in Week 2. 

Minnesota Vikings

Brian Flores has done it again. The Vikings rank first in defensive EPA per play, the same spot they were through three weeks last season, but this might be an even more impressive start to the year. Minnesota is just one of three teams over the past decade to have a defensive success rate of at least 70%, along with the 2019 Patriots and 2023 Browns. 

While Flores has been one of the league’s most aggressive blitzers, he’s taken it to another level in 2026. The Vikings blitzed Baker Mayfield on only 54% of his dropbacks in Week 3, still the highest rate in the league this week but well below the 70%+ blitz rate the Vikings had in each of the first two weeks of the season.

With the defense holding up the quality of the past two seasons, the offense needed to be average for the Vikings to be a contender. We haven’t seen that yet. Kyler Murray made his return after getting knocked out of the Week 1 game early and missing Week 2 with a concussion. The first full game wasn’t all that impressive. Murray had a 17.6% success rate, which was the lowest for a quarterback in a win since Bo Nix had a 14.3% success rate in Week 4 of 2024 against the Jets. Third downs looked like a struggle — just a 13.3% success rate — but we’ll give the offense some time to click. Though Justin Jefferson’s early exit bears watching.

Las Vegas Raiders

Earlier in the week, I wrote about the Raiders as one of the league’s surprising defenses over the first two weeks of the season. The defense stayed fun in Week 3, but the most important takeaway for Week 3 was the season debut of Brock Bowers.

Bowers’s usage in Week 3 against the Saints was as perfect as anyone could have imagined. He had a 45.2% target share with 10 catches for 116 yards and a touchdown. Bowers played 44% of his snaps out wide, 34% in the slot, and 18% inline. He averaged 6.75 yards per route run out wide, where he had six of his catches for 81 yards. 

The Raiders still haven’t found a run game — a sub-25% success rate in each of the past two weeks — but with Bowers on the field and often out wide, opposing defenses will have to spread out and take some bodies out of the box to focus on the star tight end. Add that with the fun defense and the Raiders could be an entertaining team throughout the remainder of 2026. 

There’s a lot to take in on this play. Obviously, it’s an impressive throw and catch give the situation with seven seconds remaining and one timeout to get the ball into field goal range with just one second remaining.

This play could have been avoided had the Cowboys kicked off into the field of play instead of opting for a touchback. No time came off the clock with a touchback while making the Ravens try a return would have made this play impossible. After tying the game, the Cowboys put themselves in a position to lose with a simple game management error. 

While the first overall pick of the 2015 draft struggled in his first start of the season filling in for an injured starting quarterback, the second overall pick of the 2015 draft making his first start of the season filling in for an injured quarterback, looked pretty good against the reigning Super Bowl champions.

Drake Maye looks troubled

A clear confidence gap separated the two quarterbacks in Jacksonville’s 35-6 win over New England. Trevor Lawrence was fearless throwing over the middle and creating his own windows. Drake Maye, on the other hand, continues to look like he doesn’t have confidence in his surroundings. The biggest area is the intermediate middle of the field, where he’s only thrown three passes this year after having the seventh-most pass attempts to that area last year.

The Lions can run through Jahmyr Gibbs

In a fun shootout between the Lions and Jets, Gibbs was the star player. Gibbs had 20 carries for 99 yards and two rushing touchdowns to go along with a team-high seven receptions for 66 yards and a touchdown.

It’s not just that Gibbs has seamlessly become the focal point of the Detroit offense; it’s that he’s still getting weaponized throughout the game. Gibbs lined up out wide for a 12-yard crossing route and also had a 9-yard catch from the slot. He also had the go-ahead touchdown releasing from the backfield.

That’s on top of his rushing, which hasn’t lost any effectiveness with the bigger workload. He made multiple Jets miss in the backfield on an early third-quarter touchdown run.

Special player.

The Rams are going to be fine

No one expected the Rams to be 1-2, but it’s hard to be fully concerned about the long-term outlook. The Rams should have clinched this game with a late interception, but it was erased by a bad pass interference call. The defense had a 63% success rate, which was the ninth-best for the week. Despite two interceptions, the passing offense still clicked and Davante Adams had 137 receiving yards without Puka Nacua. With the Eagles and Bills as their next two opponents, things could start to slip quickly for the Rams but they could just as easily win both games and look closer to the team most expected to start the season.