Dallas Cowboys v Philadelphia Eagles
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The 2025 NFL season got off to a wild start on Thursday night with the Philadelphia Eagles topping the Dallas Cowboys in a 24-20 thriller. There are still 271 more games to play this season, but when all is said and done, there's a good chance that the opener could go down as one of the most bizarre games of the year. 

So what happened that made the game so crazy? Glad you asked. 

Here are the five most bizarre things that happened in the game. 

1. NFL has its fastest ejection since 2005

Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter managed to get ejected BEFORE the first snap of the game. The opening kickoff went to the Cowboys, and on the play, Eagles special teams ace Ben VanSumeren suffered a leg injury, which led to a timeout on the field. During that timeout, Carter approached the Cowboys huddle and spit on Dak Prescott. 

The spit from Carter led to an immediate ejection. Although Carter definitely earned his ejection, it appears that he might have just been retaliating to a move by Prescott. During the second half, NBC showed a replay of what happened just before Carter's spitting, and as you can see below, Prescott spit on the ground and then smiled at Carter, who apparently took offense to this. 

Thanks to the ejection, Prescott actually finished the game with MORE tackles than Carter. After a Miles Sanders fumble in the second half, the Cowboys quarterback made a shoestring tackle on a play that might have gone for a touchdown. 

As for Carter, only six seconds had run off the game clock when he was thrown out, which made it the fastest ejection since 2005. In a bizarre coincidence, the ejection in 2005 also came in the Eagles' opening game of the season. Twenty years ago, Philadelphia's Jeremiah Trotter and Atlanta's Kevin Mathis got ejected after getting into a pregame scuffle. Jeremiah Trotter Jr. is on the Eagles current roster, so the Trotter family has ties to both games. 

2. The game was hit with a lengthy weather delay

If you stayed up and watched the entire game, you should probably give yourself a pat on the back, because the game didn't finish until just after 12:15 a.m. ET on Friday. Things were running smoothly in Philadelphia until lightning was spotted around Lincoln Financial Field in the second half, which led to a weather delay that started at 10:26 p.m. ET. The delay ended up lasting until 11:29 p.m. ET, which means the two teams had more than an hour to burn. It was such a long period of time that Cowboys corner Trevon Diggs actually left the locker room and went looking for food. 

In a bizarre coincidence, the Eagles' 2018 opener was also delayed by weather, which also just happens to be the last time they played in the NFL's Thursday night opener. 

3. Two teams pull off scoring feat that's only happened once since 1991

At halftime of the game, it looked we were going to be in for a shootout with the Eagles leading the Cowboys, 21-20. The two teams combined for seven drives in the first half and every single drive ended with a score. However, things definitely died down in the second half as the two teams combined for just three points, which came on a 58-yard field goal by Jake Elliott. It's almost unheard of for two teams to BOTH score 20 points or more in a first half and then turn around and score three or less in the second half. 

As a matter of fact, before Thursday night, that had only happened once since 1991, according to Josh Dubow of the Associated Press. 

And then there's also this: 

It is possible that the weather delay factored into the lack of points in the second half. Before the delay, the two teams combined for 44 points and zero punts, but after the delay -- which came with 4:44 left in the third quarter -- the two teams combined for exactly zero points. 

4. Javonte Williams pulls off rare feat

The new Cowboys running back scored both of Dallas' touchdowns, which is notable for two reasons. For one, it made him just the second player in franchise history to score two rushing touchdowns in his debut game with the Cowboys. The only other time it happened came back in 1986 when Herschel Walker scored two rushing touchdowns in his first game. The performance by Williams was also notable because the Cowboys had ZERO games last season where they rushed for multiple touchdowns, and now, they've already done it in their first game of 2025. 

Williams spent the first four seasons of his career in Denver before signing with the Cowboys in March. Williams rushed for 54 yards on 15 carries in the game. 

5. CeeDee Lamb drops several key passes

If you didn't watch the game and you only looked at the box score (or his Fantasy scoring), then you might think that CeeDee Lamb played pretty well. After all, he did catch seven passes for 110 yards. However, he probably would have topped 200 yards if he didn't have so many drops in the game. Lamb was credited with two or three drops, depending on your source, but that number could arguably be four. 

His most painful drop came with just under three minutes left in the fourth quarter. With the Cowboys facing a first-and-10 from their own 38, Prescott decided to go deep for Lamb, and that's when this happened. 

The ball went right through Lamb's hands. If he's able to hold on to it, he likely would have been tackled around Philadelphia's 20-yard line, which would have set Dallas up for a possible win. 

Three plays later, Prescott went back to Lamb on a fourth-and-3. 

This pass didn't officially go down as a drop because it would have been a difficult catch, but when you're making $34 million a year, you're expected to make difficult catches. Lamb only had seven drops during the entire 2024 season, which why it was so shocking that he had three in one game.