My biggest personal disappointment looking back at the 2025 edition of my annual exercise to predict all 272 games was how conservative I ended up being, with most good teams clocking in around the 10–7 mark. This reflected what I believed the NFL to be: a collection of about 15 teams that were good enough but not overwhelmingly so, stacked up against a collection of about 17 teams that were either indifferent or totally adrift.
What I missed was the latest turn in the NFL’s ever-evolving battle between offensive and defensive supremacy. Just like defenses hit a breaking point about a half-decade ago, offenses took a turn getting clubbed last season by creative defensive schemes and attacking philosophies. The NFL evolves rapidly, but changing the complexion of a team overnight is harder than turning around a cruise ship.
So, while this year’s slate of predictions depicts a kind of stasis—with a whopping and perhaps unlikely 11 returning postseason participants—what we’re really doing is rewarding teams that I feel are uniquely set up to win right now based on the economics of several positions. Within those parameters, I feel like I have also held myself accountable to my own self-criticisms from a year ago and attempted to embrace the surprise that almost always defines a given NFL season, at least in team records if not many playoff dark horses.
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Strength of victory tiebreaker being necessitated in both conferences foreshadows what I believe will be a thrilling and competitive NFL season, although not one that is full of upheaval. The Gatekeepers largely remain, with one new playoff team entering the field in the AFC and two new playoff teams coming aboard in the NFC. There is a noteworthy drop-off from the “best” team in the NFL to a second tier of teams, although the best team on paper—the Rams—will not finish the season as a No. 1 seed.
Without further ado, let’s jump in. We’ll go one division at a time, and, at the very bottom, we’ll list the playoff standings and explain the minutiae behind some of the more complicated tiebreakers.
AFC EAST
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1. Buffalo Bills (10–7)
The Bills were among the hardest teams to place in this exercise because I am asking Josh Allen specifically to overcome the lack of what I feel the Bills have in place to light up my other criteria. I keep coming back to my faith and long-held belief that Jim Leonhard is going to be one of the best defensive coaches in the NFL one day. While I covered Leonhard as a player and remember his involvement in crafting Rex Ryan’s best game plans, he came onto my radar as a schematic expert during the dawn of the RPO era. While Leonhard was at Wisconsin, coaches told me he was among the best at slowing down a trend that was set to rip the league apart by placing certain players in an unwinnable conflict. Leonhard doesn’t have the tools of his last boss, Vance Joseph, who coached arguably the NFL’s best defensive line a year ago in Denver. But he comes from a tree that has shown a trend-setting command of doing more with less. As for the layout of the schedule itself, Buffalo’s season has clear chapters. This is not a glorious start, and the Bills make up for a hard opening road with the gift of four games against the Jets and Dolphins after their bye week. The tale-of-two-halves breakdown here (Buffalo begins the season 2–3) signals an all-new coaching staff that needs time to figure out its own personality.
2. New England Patriots (9–8)
A five-game win/loss difference from a year ago puts the Patriots as the No. 6 seed in the AFC playoffs, despite what some will interpret as a schedule-based regression on the win front. Fair. Between Weeks 10 and 15, the Patriots have a bye week, but also have matchups against the Lions in Germany, a cross-country road trip to play the Chargers and a return back east to host the Bills. I have the Patriots losing one game—Week 8 against the Dolphins in Miami—that may appear offensive to New England fans. Still, at least once a year we see an opponent inherit an unseasonably warm tilt against the Dolphins later in the year and come out looking absolutely gassed. Last season, it was the Bills. My guess is that nearly every part of the Patriots’ operation will look crisper than last year offensively, though the defense will begin to show its wear against a fleet of high-powered offenses throughout the year. Drake Maye will be in the MVP discussion once again as the Patriots go from plucky Super Bowl contender to plucky No. 6 seed potential spoiler.
3. Miami Dolphins (5–12)
The Dolphins may have the worst roster in the NFL. So, why don’t I have them picking No. 1 in the 2027 draft? Like the first season of the Brian Flores regime, I have the Dolphins’ personnel bouncing upward with a change in leadership. Jeff Hafley is a good coach who may be able to get something out of the existing roster that Mike McDaniel could not at the end of his time there. This isn’t a reflection on either person, but the idea that different people respond to different personality types. Hence, I have a handful of seemingly unlikely victories on Miami’s schedule that seem less so when you look at the circumstances. In San Francisco after the 49ers return from Australia, for example. And a late-season victory over Hafley’s former team, the Packers, also on the road (we’ll get to that game later). Miami will almost certainly be in the running for a top-tier passer in the draft but may put itself just out of contention if the team decides to display its spunkiness a handful of times as we lay out here.
4. New York Jets (4–13)
I think this will bring out one of the most disappointing fan reactions, given that the Jets have made a legitimate effort to improve their roster. The bones of a very good team are there, and I have talked to coaches this offseason who laud the value of older defensive veterans because the talent pool emerging from the NIL-plagued college football landscape doesn’t provide enough Day 1 starters. The Jets’ efforts are routinely panned, even if a similar idea is pursued elsewhere—Seattle rounded out its defensive core by shopping for older players and benefitted heavily from those additions—and DeMario Davis, Minkah Fitzpatrick and David Onyemata (among others) can quickly raise the floor of a locker room. Still, after winning the season-opening Robert Saleh bowl in Nashville, the Jets step into a circle of hell. The Packers, Lions and Bears (oh my) in subsequent weeks, followed by a clash with a Browns team that may be much better than some people think. Down the stretch, the Jets will lose eight of their final nine games, reflecting the downside of a strategy that necessitates the help of so many players at or above the age of 30: an injury and maintenance situation that will likely see the Jets forced to play individuals who are not ready.
AFC NORTH
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1. Baltimore Ravens (11–6)
I had the Ravens finishing with the same record last season. It’s safe to say that, while I am cautious about buying in again, I believe Jesse Minter can raise the floor of this defense significantly. This, combined with the fact that it would be hard to imagine Baltimore having yet another season with this big of a starting field position discrepancy—Baltimore had one of the best offensive starting field positions in the NFL and one of the worst defensive—and as bad of a turnover margin (minus-3 a season ago). More of a question is how OC Declan Doyle takes to an every-down play-caller role, which I am optimistic about. Doyle was in Chicago last year, and while Caleb Williams’s abstractness and Lamar Jackson’s abstractness are different, it’s good job training to learn that quarterbacks, especially this one, are not robots. As for the schedule itself, if we are predicting a cataclysmic event in Pittsburgh (more on that later), Baltimore’s schedule looks quite favorable. The Ravens are only beating three projected playoff teams in this exercise and are still managing to reach 11 wins.
2. Cincinnati Bengals (9–8)
The start of the 2026 season will be a bit of a disastrous one for the Bengals. After a season-opening win over the Buccaneers, I have the team hitting a panic-inducing skid with losses to the Texans, Steelers, Jaguars and Dolphins. Miami, as we said in the Patriots’ section, could be that strange temperature-spike game that totally gasses the Bengals at the end of a long stretch in which the team will have its work cut out for it. It’s fair to assume that in Cincinnati’s first five games, at least three could have the Bengals as listed underdogs or close to it. Of course, true to Joe Burrow form, a mid-to-late-season uptick will have us believing, though it’s ultimately not quite enough for the team to recover as it falls victim to a deep tiebreaker.
In my 14-team Super Bowl favorites post, I excluded the Bengals because I felt like this team doesn’t have enough of an attacking defense or the trappings of a truly effective running game. Bengals fans will fairly argue that Cincinnati was a top-five team in rushing success rate last season with a very multiple run scheme that was building successful, punishing runs with little more than five-man blocking schemes against the likes of Micah Parsons. I think Amarius Mims could finish this season as one of the best right tackles in the NFL. So, while I may have been a little unfair and am underrating the fact that this group has been together—and incredibly multiple—while overrating new additions I wish they made that the team did not, the defense still needs to rapidly grow from bottom feeder to sure-tackling, top-15 mainstay to be taken seriously. In that way, maybe my 9–8 prediction is a hedge that the defense will make a Dexter Lawrence II–sized leap, though one that won’t be quite enough. Maybe a Bobby Wagner signing could change my mind.
3. Pittsburgh Steelers (6–11)
O.K. Here’s where this exercise gets downright unenjoyable. Every season, a team that we think will be all right, or good, or great, collapses due to the rigors of a 17-game schedule. It’s not coaching. It’s not effort. It’s just—we lost a lot of guys, and other teams lost fewer guys. Last year, it was the Ravens, Bengals, Chiefs and Commanders to some degree. This year, one such team will be the Steelers, a team that will see both of its starting wide receivers turn 29 during the season (DK Metcalf and Michael Pittman Jr.), its quarterback turn 43 (Aaron Rodgers), and two of its more valuable defensive players turn 29 (Alex Highsmith) and 32 (T.J. Watt), with another having just turned 37 (Cameron Heyward). New coach Mike McCarthy inherits a building and a locker room that was run by another coach with a very different personality for almost two decades. And while that may be a tremendous asset, it may also be like staying in an Airbnb that catches on fire and you’re not sure where the extinguishers are. Again, Pittsburgh may have the best nonquarterback roster in the AFC North on paper going into the season. But if we are painting out a realistic NFL scenario, one team has to spectacularly pop and deflate due to the whims of the cosmos. This year, that team will be the Steelers.
4. Cleveland Browns (5–12)
I have the Browns stealing a Week 1 victory over the Jaguars after Deshaun Watson looks surprisingly good in his return—and looks different enough in Todd Monken’s offense that it’s hard for a superior Jaguars team to get a bead on what Cleveland is doing. From there, the realities of the season settle in. Watson is still a major injury risk, Monken is potentially going to be cycling between two different quarterbacks and the defense will be playing without one of the 10 greatest pass rushers ever. Myles Garrett gave the Browns, and their former DC Jim Schwartz, a tremendous down-by-down advantage and this team still finished with five wins a season ago. While that may be simplistic, and the Browns have one of the easier adjusted strengths of schedule in the NFL, which would theoretically result in a boost of at least a game or two, the untested nature of this offensive line as a collective unit is also concerning. Again, all of these changes—new coach, “new” quarterback (healthy Watson), new offensive line and new defense that can be more amoebic and flexible without Garrett in the lineup—may end up yielding a team that could border on playoff contention if Monken can strike the right emotional cord. But the team’s post-bye schedule could include a date with a limited sample size upstart like Fernando Mendoza, both matchups against the surging late-season Bengals and a date with the Ravens.
AFC SOUTH
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1. Houston Texans (13–4)
My Super Bowl team will begin the season on a similarly torrid stretch as the one Houston ended its 2025 regular season on, thanks to an elite defense and a vastly improved offense in Year 2 under coordinator Nick Caley. The Texans improved offensively last season and—I feel—didn’t get enough credit for how the team performed with Davis Mills under center, reflecting the relative strength of the scheme. C.J. Stroud now has a more dependable stable of running backs and an offensive line that, if healthy, should represent a vast improvement over the stitched-together, injury-plagued unit the Texans dealt with last season. Houston doesn’t need a prolific offense, as we’ve seen recent trends favoring a dominant defense and an offense that can at least settle in the top 15 in terms of EPA per play. Quietly, Stroud was the 12th-best quarterback last season in a composite of EPA per play and completion percentage over expectation. If the defense evolves once again with the aid of new imports such as Reed Blankenship, it’s not hard to imagine the Texans factoring into this season’s final four. Despite two road losses toward the end of the season—both to NFC East teams pushing for last-minute playoff berths—I have the Texans taking the division handily.
2. Jacksonville Jaguars (9–8)
Jacksonville sneaks into the playoffs after a 2026 that may look like some regression but may be remembered as a better coaching job than the one Liam Coen orchestrated when Jacksonville won 13 games last season. The beginning of the season will prove to be rocky with an unexpected season-opening loss to the Browns leading right into a difficult road game against the Broncos. The more versatile Denver offense will challenge a Jaguars team in this early-season, high-altitude matchup, forcing the Jaguars to regroup before the bye with a pair of signature wins over the Eagles and Texans, both in London. As we mentioned when discussing the Steelers, every team deals with a stretch where injuries affect the operation. That’s the thought behind having the Jaguars stumble out of the bye week on a four-game losing streak that puts the Jaguars’ playoff hopes in jeopardy. The road contest against the Giants, who’ll finally be finding their footing in the new John Harbaugh regime, is the precursor to down-the-stretch adjustments that have Coen’s team heating up at the right time.
I think the story of this season will be Coen’s aptitude as an evaluator of personnel. Clearly, some of Jacksonville’s draft picks and offseason personnel decisions raised eyebrows, but that is so often the case with Coen’s former mentor, Sean McVay, and the Rams’ setup from which Jaguars GM James Gladstone came. Jacksonville needs to recharge its stock of draft capital for the future, which meant trusting itself on the personnel front in 2026 and taking its medicine in free agency. That puts a lot of pressure on promising young coaches like Anthony Campanile and Grant Udinski, both of whom interviewed for head coaching jobs last season.
3. Tennessee Titans (6–11)
Whoa, whoa, whoa, say Colts fans, What the hell? We’re getting to you. Relax.
The Titans have what may be the most difficult offensive line to get excited about in the NFL. The defense is vastly improved, and a star-studded coaching staff is taking the reins in Year 2 of the Cam Ward experiment, with No. 4 pick Carnell Tate added to the fold offensively. I have the Titans starting the season 0–2 before winning the very high-octane Brian Daboll bowl at MetLife Stadium, which propels the team to victories over both Indianapolis and Cleveland before the bye week. I like the Titans to improve in the short term because I believe Daboll will put some guardrails on Ward and, with a clear intention to improve Ward’s receiving room and intermediate targets, at least slightly raise the floor for a quarterback whose accuracy numbers, efficiency numbers and blitz success were downright concerning a year ago. Daboll has had a successful track record with bigger-framed mobile quarterbacks who aren’t afraid to leave the pocket, and his ability to use that threat as a catalyst to create mismatches is one of Daboll’s great strengths.
4. Indianapolis Colts (6–11)
Part of me believes I am in for a rude awakening and this will almost certainly be the worst prediction I make in this exercise. On paper, the Colts have a lot of what I would ask for in an elite contender. Their offensive line is one of the top seven units in the NFL. For a time last year, the Colts’ offense was operating at a near-historic pace in terms of efficiency (according to the FTN Football Almanac, the Colts had their best offensive DVOA since their Super Bowl season in 2006). Indianapolis has what I believe to be one of the five best play-callers in the NFL, head coach Shane Steichen. Only after Daniel Jones went down did the wheels fall off, leaving a sane person to believe that if Jones is healthy (which he is) and if the defense takes another step forward (which it didn’t really do last season, still hovering around league average, but may now that Sauce Gardner is healthy and will be with the team for an entire year), this should be a playoff contender. I am also failing to mention that this defensive line, another one of my prerequisites for success in 2026, could end up as a top-five unit by season’s end, with the grouping of Arden Key, Laiatu Latu and DeForest Buckner having low-end Seahawks potential. Also, as a bonus, in my conversations this offseason, the love for this team’s ownership—a rarity in the NFL—was off the charts. Sigh.
So what’ll go wrong? I wonder if some of what we love about the Colts coming into this season has to do with the team’s success last year against the Dolphins, Titans, Raiders, Cardinals, Chargers without Joe Alt and Rashawn Slater, Titans (again) and Falcons. This year, the team begins the season with stops against Baltimore, Kansas City, Houston and Washington, a team that I believe will be sneaky good (in London). I have the Colts generously beating Kansas City, but a 1–3 start is far different to overcome than a torrid 7–1 stretch to open last season.
AFC WEST
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1. Los Angeles Chargers (11–6)
The Chargers are not an analytical offseason darling, and I feel a bit like a football simpleton for equating Mike McDaniel’s arrival with success. This blurb is the football analyst equivalent of the social media post that engagement robots make after every free-agency signing (Julio Jones on the Titans?! Who is going to stop this team?!). I’ve also spent the offseason telling anyone who will listen that offensive success for the Chargers looks like a diminished snap-to-throw time for Justin Herbert and a rushing success rate inside the top 10, which I’m tired of doing (even though I see both of those as locks). So, I’m going to talk about the defense.
I think DC Chris O’Leary was one of the most exciting hires of the offseason. If you watch Western Michigan toward the end of last year, especially in the MAC championship game against a Miami (Ohio) team it had lost to earlier in the season, it took spectacular efforts by the offense to move the ball. O’Leary will almost certainly bring the Chargers’ 19% blitz rate from 2025 up, or find ways to weaponize more of his defenders like he did calling plays at the NCAA level. However, like O’Leary in college, his adjustments will take time (you can read a bit about that here from someone much smarter than me). That’s the reasoning for L.A.’s dubious 1–3 start, including the head-scratcher of Week 1: the loss to Arizona. There is one inexplicable Week 1 loss every season (I remember proudly calling Jerod Mayo’s Patriots over the Bengals in 2024). Still, that embarrassment will lead to innovation, and by the midpoint of 2026, the Chargers will surprise the Rams and Texans in subsequent weeks, leading to the softer underbelly of their schedule. It is not lost on me that the NFL has pummeled the Chargers with a hellish net rest differential and four different games in which their opponent is coming off a bye. Jim Harbaugh is one of the few head coaches in the NFL who can successfully turn this into a rallying cry.
2. Denver Broncos (10–7)
I will point folks asking about new offensive play-caller Davis Webb to my 2025–26 future head coaches list, where Kliff Kingsbury told me: “If I had a son playing quarterback, I’d want him playing for Davis Webb.” While moving on from Sean Payton as a down-to-down play-caller feels scary, there is absolutely zero chance that one of the league’s true spotlight hogs will vanish from the most addicting, credit-eliciting and enjoyable aspect of coaching professional football. This will be a collaborative effort, made to allow Payton to focus on more big-picture in-game situations, which ultimately doomed the Broncos after an incredible 14-win season last year. The four-win regression reflects the fact that Patrick Mahomes is healthy again and the Raiders will be running an offense the team is actually capable of running. Eleven of Denver’s regular-season wins last year were within a one-score margin, and the team’s victory over Buffalo in the playoffs was a three-point overtime win. So, I am baking in a handful of rakes for Denver to step on, because the team barely avoided those rakes in wins over the Jets, Raiders and Giants last season (the Cardinals stun the Broncos in an underrated rehashing of the Payton–Nathaniel Hackett beef, for example, after Denver upsets the defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks). How much the Broncos miss John Franklin-Myers will, in my mind, underline exactly how significant the drop-off is for Denver’s defense between 2025 and ’26. Vance Joseph’s unit held 10 opponents under 20 points and was the true secret weapon on a team that led the NFL in sacks last year. That defense will be tested amid a stretch against the Rams, 49ers and Chargers in consecutive weeks (I have Denver going 0–3 in that time frame).
3. Kansas City Chiefs (9–8)
I left the Chiefs off my list of 14 actual Super Bowl contenders, which led Fox Sports talker Nick Wright to call it the worst list ever constructed in the history of sports media. Wright’s counterargument—one deeply held by Chiefs fans this offseason—is that we have mislabeled the Chiefs’ offensive line as ineffective because it has not been healthy together long enough to be properly judged. We will see. This, along with how the team’s defense responds to the loss of a handful of excellent players, will tell the story of the team’s 2026 season. The Chiefs clocked in at a very respectable No. 8 on the great Brandon Thorn preseason offensive line rankings. The addition of Kenneth Walker III gives Kansas City a running back with a reputation for yardage creation amid difficult circumstances—something the team has not really had during the Mahomes era. I have the Chiefs starting the season 0–2, as a new-look secondary is tested by the combination of Bo Nix and Jaylen Waddle in Week 1, with Waddle’s new role on the Broncos proving difficult to ascertain over an offseason, and in Week 2 by a full-strength Colts rushing attack led by Jonathan Taylor. From there, I don’t see my breakdown as highly controversial. The three-game stretch against the Chargers, Seahawks and Broncos in Weeks 6 to 8 (all losses in this exercise) will end up being the dividing line between a nine- and 10-win season and, metaphorically, between a very good team with an excellent quarterback and a team capable of winning the Super Bowl.
4. Las Vegas Raiders (5–12)
There really isn’t an obvious game on the Raiders’ schedule in which to pinpoint Fernando Mendoza’s first start. Even WWE Tom Brady is not content and hype-obsessed enough to drop Mendoza into a road contest against his former team, the Patriots, in Week 5. The Raiders’ bye is late (Week 13) and the Chargers—again, a team I believe will have a top-10 defense—are sitting on the opposite side of that bye week. This made projecting the Raiders’ 2026 slate difficult. I debated giving Miami the nod in Week 1, seeing as Dolphins offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik and head coach Jeff Hafley are intimately familiar with the Klint Kubiak–style offense and have the pieces to bother a slower, in-his-autumn Kirk Cousins, who may struggle to execute some of the footwork associated with the new Las Vegas head coach (common sense on the personnel front has not been a hallmark of the early Tom Brady experiment). The Raiders’ two most winnable games over the first nine weeks come on the road against a vastly underrated Saints defense and a vastly improved Jets defense, which made it difficult to sneak in additional early victories. I did give Kubiak a surprising victory over the 49ers, imagining a banged-up San Francisco team and a Raiders team so desperate for a win that it heaves the entire anti-Shanahan playbook—one Kubiak has spent a lifetime studying—at the wall.
<section data-block="SingleChoice"><h3>Which NFL Team Will Win The Most Regular-Season Games in 2026?</h3><p><p><span style="font-size: 12px;">Make your pick and continue to the final results page to see how your answer compares ➡️</span></p></p><ul><li>49ers</li><li>Bears</li><li>Bills</li><li>Broncos</li><li>Chargers</li><li>Cowboys</li><li>Lions</li><li>Packers</li><li>Rams</li><li>Ravens</li><li>Seahawks</li><li>Texans</li></ul></section>
NFC EAST
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1. Dallas Cowboys (12–5)
Now we’re cooking. The Cowboys were a top-five offense by nearly every measure last season, undermined by one of the team’s worst defenses ever, and, really, one of the worst defenses we’ve seen since 1975. Unbelievably, though, the lot of us are very much coming around to the idea that the Micah Parsons trade may have actually not been an instance where the team’s 83-year-old de facto general manager was the victim of a telephone scam perpetrated by the much younger general manager of the Packers. If what Jones says is true about the Cowboys exploring another big trade on the defensive front heading into the regular season—I would guess he means Maxx Crosby or Vita Vea, though the Buccaneers would be nuts to trade Vea and Crosby fits nicely into Jones’s history of not really caring about taking swings on players with medical red flags—this team has to be considered a legitimate threat above and beyond what it already is. The addition of DC Christian Parker will bring a less porous and gouge-able defense to the forefront, which gave me the confidence to have Dallas sweeping the Giants. But after going through this exercise, a 12-win Cowboys team doesn’t feel like an acid trip once you consider the opponents. I probably could have tempered expectations a bit by having the Cowboys lose one of their games against the Commanders, but … I like this team. And, as we said at the top of the piece, it’s time to stop hedging. I like George Pickens in a year where he has to play complementary ball to cash in. I like that the league is built to defend the outside zone and the Cowboys are built to ram the ball up the gut. I love Dak Prescott in this Klayton Adams offense.
2. Philadelphia Eagles (9–8)
I think this Eagles team is either a seven-to-nine-win team or a 14-win team, and I don’t see much room in between. Philadelphia is attempting to retrofit Jalen Hurts into a Rams-like offense, which has whiffs of the end of the Doug Pederson regime, in which a heap of cooks was ushered into the kitchen to introduce more popular offensive concepts to a team that looked like it was growing stale. I’ll continue to say that Kevin Patullo was not the Antichrist he was portrayed to be in Philadelphia, especially considering the disastrous injury luck to the team’s bread and butter, the offensive line. All that said, the Eagles are rethinking everything, and it’s probably no coincidence that Jalen Hurts has come into camp looking positively svelte in preparation for a heavier dose of under-center football. Hurts was excellent from under center last season, and this year we’ll get to discover whether the Eagles’ decision to continue reverting to plays Hurts seemingly favored over the years was a decision to pacify the quarterback out of fear, or if there was a lack of originality stemming from the offensive meeting room.
The Eagles have one of the more generous schedules in the NFL this season, according to adjusted strength of schedule rankings, and I have Philadelphia pulling off some big wins against superior opponents (like the Rams in Week 4). But I also built in some fits and starts to reflect the fact that this is very much a new offense that, despite the carryover of some excellent star players, will ask a lot of Hurts and a fleet of new wide receiver additions led by rookie Makai Lemon. The Eagles are one win over the Panthers, Jaguars, Cowboys or Giants (I have a fun Week 18 spoiler in which Cam Skattebo inexplicably runs for 200 yards against a stunned Eagles team attempting to claw into a wild-card spot) from being a 10-win team in my book.
3. Washington Commanders (9–8)
The Commanders played great special teams last year, which is the lone bright spot for what amounted to a lost season in our nation’s capital. In come new offensive and defensive coordinators. David Blough, a Ben Johnson understudy and a former NFL quarterback, takes the wheel on offense. At the same time, the promising Daronte Jones comes from Minnesota to help Dan Quinn inject a bit of the Brian Flores chaos into a defense that finished just ahead of last-place Dallas in terms of EPA per play allowed (and behind a Jets team that did not record a single interception). In comes No. 7 pick Sonny Styles, headlining an offseason in which the Commanders are completely refreshing the defense with 11 new role players or starters. This forms the foundation of my confidence in a good Commanders season, with some noteworthy early-season victories over the Eagles, Seahawks and Colts. I think the Blough magic will be especially potent early in the season, when the creative young coordinator will have a robust bag of tricks to choose from. Ultimately, I’ve baked in one really difficult-to-stomach loss—in Tennessee, where an unleashed Robert Saleh defense gets the best of Jayden Daniels and forces some untimely turnovers. Otherwise, I think this is a sign that Washington will be back in the yearly conversation for a deep playoff run.
4. New York Giants (6–11)
This is a projection that breaks my heart, though, ultimately, I think the Giants will be good in time. John Harbaugh needs to fine-tune his coaching staff after a mad scramble to piece together an offense coordinated by Matt Nagy, who remained in the conversation to become Tennessee’s head coach long enough to stay available for Harbaugh’s offensive coordinator job once Todd Monken earned the Browns’ head coaching gig. Then, we have DC Dennard Wilson, whose stint with the Titans yielded the 25th- and 28th-best units in the NFL in terms of EPA per play allowed, respectively.
One thought that another NFL coach placed in my mind that I cannot shake about this iteration of the Giants: I love what they could do on third down as a defense with all those edge rushers. I just don’t know how they’ll get there. The big question for the Giants is whether a team that finished with the worst success rate in the NFL against the rush, then traded Dexter Lawrence II instead of attempting to mend fences, can improve drastically by importing 32-year-old D.J. Reader and a 28-year-old Tremaine Edmunds. I am more concerned about this than I am about the development of Jaxson Dart and the Giants’ offense. With a lead, this Giants team can be punishing. We saw 2025 interim defensive coordinator—and current Giants outside linebackers coach—Charlie Bullen experiment with some Broncos-type fronts that highlighted the Giants’ suite of edge rushers and were effective, though without a lead, made the Giants susceptible to the run. That’s why I have the Giants performing better toward the end of the season, when Harbaugh can identify some players who will be part of the post–Brian Daboll era team and, in the process, rip off a few wins that leave us believing 2027 will be the year. Don’t miss the Eagles blowing one to Harbaugh in the season finale, costing Philadelphia a shot at a playoff berth.
NFC NORTH
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1. Detroit Lions (14–3)
The Lions have by far the league’s easiest schedule adjusted for this season’s projected Las Vegas win totals. While the changes to the offensive line and the rash of injuries and off-field issues that struck the team’s secondary were no-doubt concerning, look at what the Patriots were able to do last year with a handful of very good defensive players and an EPA machine on offense. I love the hiring of Drew Petzing, who will climb out of the coaching Bermuda Triangle in Arizona and oversee an offense that is still in possession of a deep suite of playmakers. Doubting Blake Miller as a standout offensive tackle in his rookie season would also mean doubting Hank Fraley, who is consistently one of the most sought-after coaches during offseason promotion season and interviewed for Seattle’s offensive coordinator job.
The Lions begin the season with the Saints, Bills, Jets, Panthers and Cardinals before an early bye week. It would be surprising if Detroit wasn’t at least 4–1 during that stretch and, with that early success, it would be equally surprising if Dan Campbell cannot make this defense believe it is a little better than the sum of its parts. This was still a top-10 offense with a disastrous midseason coordinator shift and a middle-of-the-road defense, meaning that this personnel can win on autopilot, and certainly thrive under the right schedule and with the right coaches. Sprinkled in with a handful of end-of-season divisional games are a handful of matchups against the potentially underwhelming Buccaneers, Falcons, Titans and Giants, which is a far cry from a Lions team that ended the 2025 season with six consecutive games against teams with some degree of playoff hope.
2. Green Bay Packers (10–7)
I am turning something of a blind eye to the Packers, a team that I feel like I should relentlessly punish for having a below-average offensive line and below-average defensive line (outside of Micah Parsons). This is a maddening team, which features an ascending star quarterback, a solid play-caller and a generational pass rusher on defense, but a roster that will not be able to control the trenches at any point dependably. The one reason I have hope: Green Bay’s offensive line is very young, and while coaches have expressed to me a lack of overall confidence in the pipeline of offensive linemen emerging from college over the past five seasons, some players figure it out. Matt LaFleur’s system can, at times, mask some poor blocking. So that brings me to 2026, where, in other spaces, I have predicted a borderline MVP season from Jordan Love. Despite a rocky end-of-season stretch that has Jeff Hafley’s Dolphins putting his former quarterback in a blender—which I see leading to the revelation of a wrinkle that’ll be copied by the Bears and Texans in subsequent weeks, leading to a three-game losing streak—I have the Packers winning the games they should win. While the Packers have one of the harder adjusted strength of schedules, I don’t see a game over the first eight weeks—Vikings, Jets, Falcons, Buccaneers, Bears, Cowboys, Lions, Panthers—that screams no shot. I imagine Love to be on something of a heater and build the Packers enough wiggle room to struggle against the end-of-season divisional slate and dates with Super Bowl favorites like the Texans.
3. Chicago Bears (10–7)
I suppose, “the Bears will miss the playoffs” is the headline from this blurb, even though Chicago will have won double-digit games for the second consecutive season and will have posted a statement victory over the defending Super Bowl champions. I don’t think a 10-win season necessitates a What’s wrong? or What happened? style blurb. According to the FTN Almanac, the Bears have one of the worst projected defensive DVOAs in the NFL. This is a split that, if it turns out to be accurate, would have the Bears looking a bit like a less hilarious version of the 2025 Cowboys. Chicago was a lower-rung unit last season and, despite some flirtation with Maxx Crosby, did most of its heavy lifting in reshaping the team’s defensive backfield. Hence, I have a few “slip up” games for the Bears against teams with some elite playmakers, like Bijan Robinson in Atlanta and two losses to Ben Johnson’s former team, the Lions. Again, I don’t think slightly punishing the Bears, a team whose offensive excellence and the stunning health of its offensive line overshadowed holes on defense and distracted us from the fact that the team ranked fairly high in a ranking of clubs that benefitted from “luck”-adjusted plays, is controversial. An MVP-caliber campaign from Caleb Williams, plus a crusade against Ryan Poles to improve the defense next offseason, feels like a very comfortable and safe landing spot.
4. Minnesota Vikings (9–8)
While I dislike the fact that we fall back on platitudes, the general idea that it’s harder to keep a generational defense together than a generational offense holds some weight. I think that is true for Brian Flores’s Vikings defense, not in the sense of talent but in ideology. Past Flores defenses took the analytical push from offenses to throw more on early downs and roasted it over a crackling fire. The Vikings blitzed relentlessly on early downs, which took advantage of teams’ desires to halve the distance to gain for second down. Because of this mass chaos, teams playing Minnesota were constantly in a state of anxiety and a veteran unit can thrive on that kind of consistent hesitancy. I would guess that the rise of Flores 2.0, Mike Macdonald in Seattle, and DeMeco Ryans and Matt Burke in Houston will lead to a more conservative first-down approach and, thus, a winnowing of Minnesota’s biggest advantage. Even so, 9–8 is fair, assuming that we’ll get a slight drop-off defensively and a slight improvement offensively. I can’t buy into the Kyler Murray hype until I see him in a new offense, just like I can’t count out J.J. McCarthy, who tended to thrive in situations where he could be puppeteered by Kevin O’Connell (i.e., scripted early plays). I tried to reflect this tug of war by having the Vikings start slow but rip off a series of impressive wins toward the middle of the season—a time when we’d imagine the quarterback situation will be a little more settled. Working against Minnesota is a brutal end-of-season slate featuring New England on the road, Detroit, Washington and Chicago.
NFC SOUTH
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1. Carolina Panthers (10–7)
Full disclosure: The Panthers’ 10–7 record prediction was made before a rash of injuries struck Carolina during the early days of training camp. No matter, this is a team capable of weathering the storm. The timing of Taylor Moton’s health scare (blood clots in his lung) and the loss of Ikem Ekwonu during the postseason to a patellar tendon injury at a time when the former first-round pick seemed to be coming into his own is especially heartbreaking when considering how far this Panthers team came last season, to the point where the Panthers were neck and neck with the Rams in the wild-card round.
The biggest victory from last season was the obvious rise in confidence for Bryce Young. We saw him come alive both personally and schematically in a way that suggested he finally felt at home in the NFL. While the Panthers could obviously regress offensively thanks to the Moton injury and the loss of one-year wonder Rico Dowdle—though 2024 second-round pick Jonathon Brooks seems poised to take on the RB2 role in Carolina—the rise in Ejiro Evero’s defense will make all the difference. Evero has quietly been one of the league’s best defensive coordinators, but has been stuck on a string of awful teams dating back to his stint as defensive coordinator for the Nathaniel Hackett–led Broncos. The additions of Devin Lloyd and Jaelan Phillips should take the load off a talented secondary, and I see some of the more unexpected Panther victories on this schedule—like the season-opener in Chicago—as low-scoring affairs. Notice that there are only two wins on this schedule (one against Philadelphia and one against Baltimore) that would be considered against top-tier attacking defenses. With this, I was trying to stay conservative on my Bryce Young optimism while also acknowledging that this team, top to bottom, is much better.
2. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (7–10)
Buccaneers fans rejoice. The last time I did not have the Buccaneers winning the NFC South, I picked such an egregiously low win total that the article made it to the cork board of the general manager and I was publicly filleted for it. So, congratulations on the franchise’s latest Super Bowl victory.
My pessimism in Tampa Bay stems from the losses of both Lavonte David to retirement and Mike Evans to free agency, with the team’s remaining veteran stalwarts like Baker Mayfield and Vita Vea both going through public contract disputes. With a coach who would seem to be on the hot seat, it feels like there is little terra firma in Tampa on which to stand. This can sometimes be meaningless, and it can sometimes set the course for larger-scale change. Tampa Bay still boasts one of the best offensive lines in the NFL, signed my favorite offensive free-agent target in Kenneth Gainwell, and attacked the defense relentlessly via the draft and free agency. GM Jason Licht did not take this offseason lying down, and as much as Tampa Bay feels like a team in transition, the organization has set itself up to compete in 2026. I loved the point Alex Blickle made about the hiring of Zac Robinson as the team’s new offensive coordinator: This was obviously a move to get more running backs involved in the passing game. To take his point a step further, Mayfield had one of the highest EPAs per scramble in the NFL last year, which is not something you want a 30-plus-year-old Mayfield doing. Involving the running back in the passing game more—something Gainwell does incredibly well—could take much-needed stressors off Mayfield and remove some injury risk. The Buccaneers have one of the hardest schedules in the NFL. I have the team splitting the season series with Carolina and Atlanta, sweeping the Saints and beating the Rams, so I don’t want to hear that I am not being fair.
3. Atlanta Falcons (6–11)
From the moment that both Kevin Stefanski was on the market and the Falcons had a job opening, the two were destined for each other. This was a marriage forged in common sense. However, as we get closer to game time without Michael Penix Jr. participating in team drills, and Tua Tagovailoa inching toward a Week 1 start carrying his own troubling injury history, one has to wonder what happened to the rest of the plan. In the best of worlds, I imagine Penix and OC Tommy Rees working well together. Rees is a future NFL head coach who maximized his own skill set as a quarterback and did so multiple times as a longtime play-caller for Notre Dame. However, Penix has not yet played a full season’s worth of NFL games (this is not all due to injury) and he is entering Year 3. Tagovailoa is migrating from one of the most quarterback-friendly offenses in recent NFL history to a system that struggled to open its arms for Baker Mayfield or Deshaun Watson in Cleveland. Outside of Mayfield’s 11–5 campaign in 2020, the highest quarterback rating by a QB with multiple starts during Stefanski’s run with the Browns was held by Joe Flacco and Case Keenum. This isn’t an anti-Stefanski take, mind you. This is a Why choose Tua outside of the obvious fact that his contract is wildly affordable take. Anyway, Atlanta comes into this season without a world-beating defensive front and an entire unit that, while extremely well-coached and having skyrocketed as a pass-rushing unit last year, does not give me enough confidence to lean Atlanta in coin-flip games. I do have Stefanski winning the return to Cleveland, though.
4. New Orleans Saints (6–11)
The Saints have my favorite sleeping giant of an offensive line, and a top-tier play-caller and defensive coordinator tandem. The Saints also have the third-most generous schedule in the NFL this season in terms of opponent projected win totals. With that in mind, I have the Saints riding into the bye week at 4–3. Everything about this projection, though, comes down to Tyler Shough and what happens when the league gets a larger sample size on the guy. The second-year quarterback is entering his sophomore season but also his age-27 season. Shough will celebrate his birthday the day after the team will play the Raiders on Sept. 27. I bring that up to ask you this: Does what scouts feared about Brandon Weeden coming out of college—that there is less of a ceiling—apply to Shough as well? Is that fair, given that Sam Darnold had his best seasons at 27 and 28 (whoa, Shough is closer in age to Darnold than Drake Maye). I don’t want to rain on the Shough parade, but I do want to point out that his EPA per passing play was not that much better than Spencer Rattler’s. And, even though we lauded Shough as a rushing quarterback after the win over Tampa Bay in which Shough scored two touchdowns, Rattler had a better EPA per rush during his time as New Orleans’s starter. While we’re at it, Rattler had a better tight-window-throwing percentage and completion percentage over expectation (Conor wrestles the computer away from Mrs. Rattler and regains control of the exercise).
Shough had some big moments and people very much wanted to believe in him down the stretch last year, when the Saints got hot against the Buccaneers, Panthers, Jets and Titans. So, that rationalizes my late-season bloodbath: a six-game losing streak, including two losses to a superior Carolina defense, two road losses to the Bears and Bengals, and losses to the Packers and Buccaneers. I don’t yet have the confidence that New Orleans can play good enough defense to stomp the Bears, Bengals and Packers, or an effective enough offense to take out some of the trendier defenses I’m high on in 2026.
NFC WEST
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1. Los Angeles Rams (13–4)
The NFL’s best team on paper, which came within a few plays of a Super Bowl it would have almost certainly won last season, went on a delirious offseason spending spree and brought in two excellent cornerbacks and the best pass rusher of his generation. This is the definition of not overthinking it. I feel like I brought enough bold to the table by keeping Joe Burrow and Patrick Mahomes out of the playoffs again. I refuse to entertain the scenario where the Rams are not excellent. I’m going to enjoy Sean McVay pivoting hard again offensively, leaving the rest of the NFL in its army pants and flip-flops era looking like a bunch of poseurs of the highest order. I’m going to enjoy Aaron Donald joining this team in Week 8. I’m going to enjoy Nick Sirianni celebrating yet another unfathomable narrow victory over this team as if he’s saved 11 children from an apartment fire. And, mostly, I’m going to enjoy the presence of Myles Garrett putting almost every opposing offensive coordinator into a blender. You can read more about that here. If you look at the four losses on the Rams’ schedule, all of them are against teams that have elite offensive lines and the ability to run the ball to both sides with equal strength. New Bucs OC Zac Robinson, who worked in Los Angeles from 2019 to ’23, will clip his former boss toward the end of the season to keep the Rams from clinching the No. 1 seed.
2. Seattle Seahawks (11–6)
The story of the Seahawks’ 2026 season is not going to be what the team lost in free agency, but how many other really good players were on this roster that we didn’t know about. Remember Rylie Mills in the Super Bowl, for example? I don’t see much of a regression around this Seahawks team, which I’ve maintained has a checkmate advantage over the NFL so long as the defensive line stays healthy and there are enough bodies to sit in big nickel. We can build in a slight step down in win total, given that we can still have fair questions about the long-term viability of the quarterback, though not nearly enough to assume that Sam Darnold is going to fall through the floor. Darnold plays well in this offense, his defense and the Shanahan system itself protects him from his more destructive impulses, and the exciting part about Mike Macdonald as a head coach is his thirst for knowledge, searching for ways Darnold can continue to grow as he approaches 30. I have Seattle starting the season at a choppy 3–4 before Macdonald begins adding new features to his virus-like defense, leading to a six-game winning streak heading into and coming out of the bye.
3. San Francisco 49ers (10–7)
Injuries have taken their toll in San Francisco, and the 49ers have signed Deebo Samuel to replace Ricky Pearsall, who may end up being out for the whole season. Samuel is still effective with the ball in his hands, especially after the catch, but this 49ers team is almost exclusively dependent on a 30-year-old running back, 30- and soon-to-be-33-year-old wide receivers (Samuel and Mike Evans), a 32-year-old tight end and a 38-year-old left tackle. Coach Kyle Shanahan is talking about the lingering effects of a serious concussion he sustained during a car accident affecting his decision-making ability in the short term. That’s terrifying. While this is certainly profiling as a season where the wheels come off, I keep coming back to how the 49ers played without Fred Warner and Brock Purdy last season and how deep Shanahan’s coaching staff is. Raheem Morris and Matt Eberflus both have head-coaching experience, and Chris Foerster has been as loyal a lieutenant as exists in the NFL right now. The 49ers have one of the more difficult end-of-season schedules, though I have the team stumbling out of the gate to reflect the current injury situation and out of the bye, with a Kyle Shanahan–Klint Kubiak matchup that creates an unnecessary stumbling block the team will have to recover from down the stretch.
4. Arizona Cardinals (2–15)
Last and, well, last are the Cardinals. We need to stop ourselves from diving headfirst into the training camp narrative machine, especially with grainy, clipped-together footage of Marvin Harrison Jr. failing to catch a practice ball thrown by a quality-control coach who played defensive end at Stetson. That said, Harrison is a small piece of a doom-and-gloom puzzle that we’ve put together via the fact that Arizona is breaking in a new head coach, in the toughest division in football, with the hardest adjusted strength of schedule in the NFL, after the team was bad enough last year to pick No. 3 in the draft. I think a sensible person views this version of the Cardinals as the precursor to another era. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jeremiyah Love doesn’t lead Arizona in carries over the first 75% of the season because the team wants Love to be great with Dante Moore a year from now. But I did want to build in an absolutely stunning win over the Chargers in Week 1, which was based on nothing remotely scientific and only the thought that the Cardinals spent the entirety of training camp hearing how bad they were and how great Mike McDaniel’s offense is going to look. From there, it’s the sludge pits. Seahawks, 49ers, a cross-country road trip against the Giants, Lions, Rams, Broncos, Cowboys, Seahawks, Rams, Chiefs (shivers). The Cardinals, Jets and Dolphins all deserve consideration for the No. 1 pick, but no team seems to have a pipeline as direct as Mike LaFleur’s crew.
Projected 2026 playoff standings
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See below for our full playoff standings, followed by an explanation of the tiebreakers.
The division winners in each conference were pretty straightforward, with the Ravens beating out the Chargers thanks to a head-to-head win and no other ties to settle. The wild cards got a little hairier, as mentioned in the intro.
In the AFC, the Patriots emerged from a four-way tie for the No. 6 seed thanks to conference record. Then the Jaguars beat out the Bengals and Chiefs for the No. 7 seed thanks to strength of victory.
In the NFC, the Packers are ahead of the Bears due to record in common games and ahead of the 49ers thanks to strength of victory.
This was all helpfully tabulated by my editor, Mitch Goldich. If you are truly a nerd about this stuff (like he is), you will enjoy his video below with even more detail.
🚨 Extremely nerdy video: Explaining the playoff tiebreakers in @ConorOrr’s annual post predicting all 272 games.
Required strength of victory in both conferences.
Read it here:https://t.co/7r9H63RqYs pic.twitter.com/2fhvtjwf7Y
— Mitch Goldich 🐙 (@mitchgoldich) August 4, 2026
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