NFL Week 1 Recap: Tom Brady and Green Bay Packers Among Exciting Performances

The NFL opened up its regular season this past week, and it was record breaking to say the least.

Tom Brady tied the NFL record for the longest touchdown pass in league history with a 99-yard strike to Wes Welker late in their game against the Miami Dolphins in the first game of Monday Night Football.

Brady and Chad Henne, in the same game, combined for over 900 passing yards, which broke a one game passing yard record for the league.

In the second game on Monday Night Football, Oakland Raiders kicker Sebastian Janikowski tied the NFL record for the longest field goal with a 63-yarder as time expired to end the first half against the Denver Broncos.

In the NFL's kickoff game between the Green Bay Packers and the New Orleans Saints, Packers kick returner Randall Cobb tied the NFL record for the longest kickoff return, with a 108-yard return in the third quarter.

The biggest record to be broken, though, was there were eight kicks returned for touchdowns in Week 1. Three came from kickoffs and five from punt returns.

The reason this is such a big surprise is the NFL was trying to pretty much end kickoffs all together in the offseason.

The league decided to move the kick-off up five yards from the 30 to the 35 yard line for safety concerns.

This was supposed to create more touchbacks and limit returns. 

Fans like myself were very leery of this rule.

To me, this pretty much was going to be boring, but someone forgot to tell the players that.

The opening weekend, as before mentioned, broke the NFL record for returns for touchdowns in one week, but it also tied another record for having three kick-off returns for over 100 yards.

There's still going to be an increase in touchbacks, but don't expect the league to change it with all the excitement from Week 1.