You know the superstars like Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes and Brock Purdy, but which other players have been key to the success of the NFL’s 3-0 teams?
The calendar has flipped to October, and we’re down to five undefeated teams. Some of these teams we’ve regularly seen atop the standings over the last several seasons – the Buffalo Bills, Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers – but we’ve also got some surprises given their recent history and preseason expectations – hello to the Las Vegas Raiders and Minnesota Vikings.
All of these teams with perfect records are led by star power, but we’ll take a look at some impactful players who may have been flying under the radar heading into this season.
Buffalo Bills Tight End Dalton Kincaid
Off to their third straight 3-0 start, the Bills are unsurprisingly led by a quarterback who is widely considered to be one of the NFL’s best in Josh Allen. Not only does the 2024 league MVP have five touchdown passes and a 104.1 QB rating, but he has also rushed for two scores in each of Buffalo’s first three games. Since 1925, the only other quarterback to have three consecutive games with two or more rushing touchdowns at any point of a season was Billy Kilmer for the 1961 San Francisco 49ers.
James Cook is also playing a huge role in the success of a Buffalo team that leads the NFL in scoring at 33.7 points per game. He scored his second touchdown of the season in Sunday’s 24-16 win over the Los Angeles Chargers and is averaging a league-best 5.97 yards per carry a year after he led the NFL in rushing with 1,621 yards.
While Allen and Cook are undeniably the two biggest playmakers on the Bills offense, tight end Dalton Kincaid has also been crucial to the team’s success.
After missing five games last season due to hamstring and knee injuries, Kincaid leads Buffalo with 14 receptions and 263 yards – the most by a tight end this season. Against the Chargers, he had a 14-yard catch and a 24-yard reception, though while shedding tacklers and fighting for more yards, he did get the ball punched out from behind for one of Buffalo’s unfathomable five turnovers. It still went down as his sixth catch of 20+ yards – the most by any tight end in 2026 and nearly halfway to Kincaid’s total of 13 from all of last season.
One reason for the jump in production is he is much more involved in first-year coach Joe Brady’s offense. He’s already run 66 passing routes, or 22 per game, after he ran 183 routes in 12 contests last season, or 15.3 per game. He’s also running deeper routes, with his average depth of being targeted up from 9.0 a year ago to 12.2 yards – the highest among the 31 tight ends who have run at least 45 routes. The NFL average for all tight ends in 2026 is 6.0 yards downfield.
On the 17 times he’s been targeted this season, Kincaid has registered 12 burns and 16.05 burn yards per target – the highest among all qualifying tight ends.
Kincaid is proving to be one of the NFL’s top tight ends, and when he’s on the field, Buffalo tends to win. Since the start of 2024, the Bills are 27-6 in games Kincaid plays (including the playoffs) compared to 4-5 in games he doesn’t.
One of those losses with Kincaid playing came against Buffalo’s next opponent, the New England Patriots. The Bills split their two meetings with the Patriots last season, with Kincaid catching nine passes for 142 yards.
Kansas City Chiefs Tight End Travis Kelce
After a disappointing 2025 season, the Kansas City Chiefs are back in their customary perch atop the AFC West. Patrick Mahomes once again looks like his MVP self after last season was cut short due to a torn left ACL, with 812 passing yards, seven touchdown throws and a 108.9 QB rating.
The Kansas City signal-caller has a new weapon with him in the backfield this season and Kenneth Walker III is thriving in his new home. The MVP of last February’s Super Bowl leads the NFL in rushing with 360 yards, average yards after contact at 2.81 yards and has the most missed and broken tackles forced with 34.
While the Chiefs are getting MVP-level production from the QB with the highest winning percent in the last 50 years (not a huge surprise) and the running back they gave $43 million to in free agency (as they should), they’re also seeing a bit of a resurgence from their aging tight end with Travis Kelce leading Kansas City in receptions (14) and receiving yards (231).
An argument can certainly be made that a surefire Hall of Famer who has led the Chiefs in receptions in nine of the last 10 seasons, isn’t an unsung impactful player, but the 36-year-old had been in a bit of a decline over the past few years and few could’ve predicted that he would be playing like he’s in his prime.
After averaging a career-low 50.1 receiving yards per game in 2025, Kelce’s averaging 77.0 receiving yards this season – his most since 78.7 yards in 2022. He’s also been deemed open on all 18 of the times he’s been targeted and has registered a burn percentage of 88.9 – tops among the 31 tight ends who have run at least 45 routes. (Last season, he had a burn percentage of 65.7.)
Not only is he beating his man in coverage and getting open at a higher rate, but he’s also picked up more yardage after a reception than any other pass-catcher through three weeks with 157.
He’s averaging a career-high 11.2 yards after the catch – fourth among the 79 players with at least 10 receptions – after his 2025 average of 5.8 yards after the catch ranked 37th among qualifiers. His previous season-best average for yards after the catch came a decade ago in 2016, when he averaged 7.7.
Kelce will look to continue his career renaissance against the surprising Las Vegas Raiders in a matchup of unbeatens. In two games against the Raiders last season – one without Mahomes – he had 66 receiving yards on six receptions.
Las Vegas Raiders Defensive End Kwity Paye
Expectations weren’t particularly high for the Las Vegas Raiders for the 2026 season, and why would they be? The team won all of three games in 2025, and 38-year-old quarterback Kirk Cousins was brought in to keep the driver’s seat warm until the team felt No. 1 pick Fernando Mendoza was ready to take the wheel.
All Cousins has done is lead the Raiders to a 3-0 start while throwing three touchdown passes in each of those games, becoming the first QB to open with three victories and three TD passes in each win since Russell Wilson for the 2020 Seattle Seahawks. The last time a QB opened with four wins and 3+ TD passes in each game was in 2007, when Tom Brady did so in an astonishing 10 straight games for the 16-0 New England Patriots.
Cousins had Brock Bowers available for the first time this season last Sunday, and the veteran QB threw 13 passes to his young Pro Bowl tight end. Bowers hauled in 10 of them for 116 yards with a touchdown with 6:22 remaining for the final score in a 35-27 victory over the New Orleans Saints.
With Cousins directing the offense, perennial Pro Bowl edge rusher Maxx Crosby is spearheading a defense that ranks second in overall scoring efficiency at 25.7% (nine scoring drives out of 35 opponent possessions) and has forced a league-leading nine turnovers. Crosby is enjoying another Pro Bowl-caliber season, with his 18 pressures ranking fifth among all edge rushers, but some of his success stems from the offseason addition of the defensive end who lines up opposite him.
Kwity Paye signed a three-year, $48 million contract with the Raiders in March after spending his first five NFL seasons with the Indianapolis Colts. He had 8 ½ sacks in 2023 and eight sacks in 2024 but totaled just four in 17 games last season.
He’s halfway to that total through three games for the Raiders, but even on the plays when he’s not taking down the quarterback, he’s applying pressure, allowing one of his teammates to get the sack. His adjusted-sack rate of 10.9 is the highest among the 55 edge rushers with at least 45 pass rushes, and this comes one year after his 2025 adjusted-sack rate of 1.2 was the lowest among the 46 edge rushers with a minimum of 225 pass rushes.
Paye’s QB knockdown rate of 8.7 in 2026 is also the ninth highest among qualifiers after his 2.3 knockdown rate in 2025 was third lowest.
Paye, Crosby and the Raiders defense face a huge challenge in Week 4 in their bid to open 4-0 for the first time since 1990 with a matchup with Patrick Mahomes and the unbeaten Chiefs. Mahomes has only been sacked four times, and the Chiefs have the fourth lowest pressure rate-allowed at 38.6. Crosby does have six career sacks of Mahomes, which are the most by any defensive player on the two-time league MVP.
Minnesota Vikings Cornerack Isaiah Rodgers
After a 14-win 2024 sparked by a career resurrection from Sam Darnold, the Minnesota Vikings regressed in 2025 with J.J. McCarthy, Carson Wentz and even Max Brosmer getting starts at quarterback as the team stumbled to a 9-8 finish. Kyle Murray was signed this past offseason in an effort to rejuvenate the offense, but he was concussed in the season opener giving way to Wentz in Week 2 before Murray was cleared to return last week.
Despite having 2022 Offensive Player of the Year Justin Jefferson at their disposal, neither Murray nor Wentz have been able to get the offense in gear with the Vikings ranking last in successful play-rate (29.3) with league lows of 411 passing yards and 19 first downs via the pass.
Needless to say, Minnesota’s defense has been the unit most responsible for the team’s 3-0 start. The Vikings are second in scoring defense (13.7 points per game), first in third-down conversion rate (22.7) and first in sacks (14).
Outside edge rushers Dallas Turner and Andrew Van Ginkel are leading the pass rush with 3 ½ and three sacks, respectively, while corner Isaiah Rodgers is blossoming into a lockdown defensive back.
After recovering a fumble and blocking a potential game-tying field goal midway through the fourth quarter in Minnesota’s Week 2 win over the Chicago Bears, Rodgers intercepted his first pass of the season in last Sunday’s 23-16 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In 117 times in pass coverage, he’s been targeted 14 times for a target-rate of 12.0 – tied with teammate Byron Murphy Jr. for the sixth lowest among the 39 corners with at least 80 plays in pass coverage – and he’s only been beaten three times for a burn-allowed rate of 21.4 – third best among qualifying corners.
He’s also not giving up much ground on the receiver he is covering, with his average burn yards allowed per target of 2.57 being the lowest among qualifying corners.
Next up for Rodgers and the Vikings is a matchup with an 0-3 Miami Dolphins team that ranks just ahead of Minnesota in successful play-rate at 30.6. They also rank dead last in open percentage at 65.9 with top receiver Malik Washington’s burn percentage of 47.8 the fifth lowest out of the 35 wide outs who have run more than 85 routes.
San Francisco 49ers Left Tackle Trent Williams
While the Minnesota Vikings’ offense has been stuck in neutral in the early going, the San Francisco 49ers’ offense is firing on all cylinders. They rank first in successful play-rate at 54.6, first in yards per play at 7.35 and first in touchdown efficiency at 48.1 (13 TDs on 27 offensive drives).
Christian McCaffrey is off to another solid start, averaging 4.74 yards per carry and 90.0 scrimmage yards per game – a mark that typically bodes well for the 49ers. Since being acquired by San Francisco during the 2022 season, the 49ers are 33-9 when he amasses at least 90 scrimmage yards in a game (including the playoffs) and 10-7 when he plays and fails to reach that mark.
McCaffrey scored his third touchdown of the season in Sunday’s 36-30 win over the Arizona Cardinals, and George Kittle caught a pair of TD passes to give him three on the season, as well. Led by Kittle’s 174 receiving yards, the Niners are one of four teams to have four players with at least 100 yards receiving.
Brock Purdy, meanwhile, is the engineer of the offensive machine and an early MVP frontrunner. He’s completing a career-best 72.3% of his passes, averaging 9.51 yards per attempt with a 9:1 touchdown to interception ratio and a 133.1 passer rating.
He also hasn’t been sacked once.
That’s right, a quarterback who entered this season having been sacked in 27 of his previous 29 games, enters October having not been sacked on 89 designed pass plays.
He is the first quarterback to have attempted at least 20 passes in each of a season’s first three games and not been sacked once since Andy Dalton for the 2014 Cincinnati Bengals. The last QB to have 20+ attempts without being sacked in the first four games was Peyton Manning in 2005 for the Indianapolis Colts.
Kudos go to an offensive line of left tackle Trent Williams, left guard Connor Colby, center Jake Brendel, right guard Dominick Puni and right tackle Colton McKiviitz. Those five have been together on 137 of San Francisco’s 171 offensive plays this season, and Purdy is averaging 9.7 yards per pass when those five are together compared to 7.43 when they’re not.
Only 19 of Purdy’s 83 pass attempts have been under pressure (as a reference, the New England Patriots’ Drake Maye has been pressured on 33 of his 80 pass attempts), as San Francisco’s offensive line has registered a league-low 28.9 pressure-allowed rate.
Purdy is getting rid of the ball faster this season at 2.88 seconds, down from a 3.06-second release time in 2025, and when he is under duress, he’s using his legs to evade the pressure and pick up big yards. He is averaging 15.17 yards on his six scrambles, and on 10 total runs he has eight first downs.
In protecting Purdy’s blind side, Williams has a pressure-allowed rate of 5.6 – well below the league average of 10.3 for left tackles. Williams sustained what was listed as a stinger/neck injury against the Cardinals, but coach Kyle Shanahan indicated the 12-time Pro Bowler will be practicing this week and will be good to go this Sunday against the Denver Broncos.
The Broncos will present quite the challenge, as their defense generated a pressure rate of 55.7 while sacking Matthew Stafford four times in Sunday’s 30-26 comeback win.
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