After one of the most chalk-heavy seasons in recent NFL memory, it’s tempting to take last year’s playoff picture and convince yourself that 2025-26 will look more or less the same.
Six of the division winners in 2023 repeated as champions in 2024, and seven of the division winners from last season are currently the oddsmakers’ front-runners to do it again this year. Does that sound a little bit too easy? History would say yes. On average, there are six new playoff teams each year. Last year, though, we had only four.
Is the parity era of the NFL in decline? It might be, but I’m not willing to say that based on one year of outlier data. Last season’s underdogs got off to a hot start in September, but the gap between the league’s elite and the basement dwellers grew unusually large as the season progressed. Favorites won 71.8 percent of games through December last year, which was the second-highest rate since the NFL went to 16 games in 1978, per ESPN research.
At this point, you’re probably wondering why I’m talking so much about what happened last year in a preview of the 2025 season: If there’s one thing we know about the NFL, it’s that it stands for “not for long.”
Chalk seasons like 2024 are rare for a reason. Coaching changes, injuries, tougher schedules, and just plain bad luck tend to knock a few seemingly good teams off their pedestals every year.
So instead of just predicting a rerun of last January’s playoff picture, I’m looking for volatility. I’m embracing the variance and my contrarian instincts. What follows is a collection of those takes. Some are tied to win totals, some to playoff chances, some to MVP races. But the common thread is that I don’t buy that 2025 will be as predictable as 2024.
It’s time to plant my flag for the 2025 season. Let’s start with the offseason hype I’m selling.
1. The Washington Commanders were the story of the 2024 regular season, but I’m highly skeptical that what they did is repeatable. I think they’ll miss the playoffs in a competitive NFC in 2025.
Jayden Daniels had one of the best rookie quarterback seasons in NFL history and willed a very limited roster to a 12-5 record and a trip to the NFC championship game. It’s worth revisiting just how much went right for Washington in absurd late-game situations because I don’t think people have fully internalized it. The Commanders beat the Giants in Week 2 by three points in large part because the Giants didn’t have a healthy field goal kicker in the fourth quarter. There was the Hail Mary against Chicago. The epic comeback in the second half against Philadelphia after Jalen Hurts left with a concussion. The overtime win against Atlanta after the Falcons missed a game-winning field goal at the buzzer in regulation. The 91-yard drive by Marcus Mariota that led to a game-winning touchdown on the final play in Week 18. All of those late-game miracles happened during one of the league’s easiest schedules to get the Commanders to 12 wins. Washington was unusually great on fourth down—historically great, in fact. The Commanders had 0.22 expected points added per fourth down last year, which was the best of any team in the 21st century.
Now, Washington faces a much more difficult schedule. If injuries and late-season resting aren’t a factor, it’ll have to play Hurts and Dak Prescott four times this year. (It basically faced them only once last year; in addition to Hurts suffering that concussion, Prescott went down for the season in Week 9.) Instead of beating up on a weak NFC South, the Commanders will have to play the AFC West and NFC North, which are arguably the two best divisions in the NFL.
The Commanders’ struggles with drafting over the last half decade (outside of Daniels and corner Mike Sainristil) mean that they’ve had to spend in free agency to paper over the cracks. They have one of the oldest rosters in the NFL, and their two most notable offseason additions, Deebo Samuel and Laremy Tunsil, are over 30. There are flashing regression indicators everywhere on this roster, and they’ll need another healthy and elite season from Daniels to go over their win total.
Bet: Commanders under 9.5 wins (-110)
2. The Denver Broncos are getting a lot of love this offseason with year-two Bo Nix and their elite defense. But maintaining the level of their 2024 defense will be really difficult.
Any time the case for a team improving year over year is centered on a previously great defense playing even better, alarm bells start ringing in my head. This year, that team is the Denver Broncos. I already mentioned how last season was uncharacteristically chalky. I would argue no one in the NFL benefited more from this than Sean Payton’s Broncos, who seemed to be built in a lab to prey on bad teams and did very little to beat good teams. Denver finished 1-5 against playoff teams (excluding Week 18) and 8-2 against everyone else.
If you remove the Week 18 outlier game against the Chiefs backups that skewed their data, the Broncos finished 18th in offensive DVOA and fourth in defensive DVOA.
Broncos defensive coordinator Vance Joseph got his first job in that role in Miami in 2016. His defenses never ranked in the top 10 in points per game allowed prior to last season. It’s certainly possible that the Broncos will be able to maintain their status as a top-five defense and maybe even be the best defense in the NFL. But the fact that seemingly everyone is so convinced of it suggests to me that there’s plenty of groupthink going on. Last year, the general consensus best defenses entering the season were the Jets, Browns, and Ravens. None of those teams finished top five in DVOA.
Instead, the Eagles and Broncos defenses came from relative obscurity to be two of the league’s best units. When Denver did step up in class and face elite opponents, it allowed 41 points to the Ravens, 30 to the Bengals, 57 over two games to the Chargers, and 31 to the Bills in the playoffs. Joseph’s aggressive defensive scheme took advantage of unprepared and underwhelming quarterbacks, but teams will have more counters to that approach now. The Broncos won’t get to stockpile wins against the NFC South this year, and I think it’s more likely they’ll take a step back defensively than a step forward. With a low-ceiling offense that’s reliant on a dominant offensive line and limited skill-position talent, I think Denver will struggle to improve on last year’s showing.
Bet: Broncos under 9.5 wins (-110)
3. The Tennessee Titans made history last year as the worst against-the-spread team in NFL history, but Cam Ward gives them an opportunity to hit the reset button.
I’m not a scout, and I’m fairly convinced we’re all way too confident during the draft process in trying to project and assess rookie quarterbacks. What I do know is that the Titans’ quarterback situation wasn’t just bad last year—it crossed into the realm of sabotage. We’ve all seen the Will Levis lowlights at this point. Mason Rudolph wasn’t much better in relief on an already dead team.
The Titans project to have a considerably improved offensive line with the additions of Dan Moore Jr. and Kevin Zeitler and the return of Lloyd Cushenberry III. The additions enable them to move JC Latham from left tackle to right tackle, and Tennessee might finally have a league-average offensive line after years of struggling to block. The Titans finished as the league’s second-worst offense last year by DVOA, and while Ward will not have a ton of talented skill-position players to work with, we’ve seen in the past two years how a rookie quarterback can completely revolutionize an offense. Tennessee also did a much-needed overhaul of the entire special teams unit, which was the league’s worst last year.
I’m not saying the Titans are about to have a season comparable to the 2023 Texans or the 2024 Commanders. But it wouldn’t surprise me if Tennessee is a feisty team that hovers around .500. The schedule is difficult in the first month but lightens up considerably in the second half, at which point Ward will ideally be more comfortable in the NFL. Given that I’m skeptical about some of last year’s AFC wild-card teams repeating or improving upon their success, the door is open for surprises in the second and third tiers of AFC contenders.
Bet: Titans over 5.5 wins (-145) and make the playoffs (+390)
4. One offseason narrative I am buying into is the potential downside of the Miami Dolphins.
I think it’s very easy to spin any preseason or training camp narrative to fit your predetermined belief in a team, but Miami, without question, enters the 2025 season as one of the highest-variance teams in the league. It’s true that when Tua Tagovailoa starts, the Dolphins are a formidable 38-24. Miami won eight games last year despite the fact that he made just 11 starts. Everyone knows about the injury history surrounding him and most of the team’s star players—De’Von Achane, Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle—but the secondary enters the new season with real concerns as well.
The Jalen Ramsey–for–Minkah Fitzpatrick trade leaves the Dolphins dangerously thin in the secondary now that their top corner, Kader Kohou, is done for the year. The offensive line is replacing five-time Pro Bowl left tackle Terron Armstead, who retired in April. Even with Armstead, the Dolphins managed to finish only 20th last year in pass blocking, per PFF. Kicker Jason Sanders will start the year on injured reserve. So while this remains a talented skill-position group on offense, I’m not sure Miami can really block or cover anyone all season long.
The Dolphins’ season could really snowball, and I think it’s worth investing in the potential of that happening through the alternate win total market. There is a reason betting odds have Mike McDaniel as the favorite to be the first head coach fired.
Bet: Dolphins under 6.5 wins (+155) and under 5.5 wins (+270)
5. At a certain point, we should all be betting on Matt LaFleur’s consistent regular-season success.
Matt LaFleur enters the 2025 season in his seventh year as an NFL head coach. He’s won double-digit games in four of his six seasons and has a 67-33 overall record (a .670 winning percentage). It’s not groundbreaking to just list off the Pro Football Reference page of a head coach as the reason to like a team, but I don’t think LaFleur gets enough credit for the work he did in seamlessly transitioning from Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love. Love started poorly in 2023 before a midseason turnaround, and he suffered multiple injuries in 2024 that hurt his efficiency. Despite this, the Packers have finished sixth and fourth in offensive DVOA in Love’s two seasons. When Love suffered an MCL injury in Week 1 last year, most expected the Packers to be in jeopardy once Malik Willis came in as a backup. Instead, Green Bay beat the Colts and Titans comfortably with a quarterback who was the butt of everyone’s jokes when the Packers first traded for him.
The Packers have the most stability of any team in the NFC North, as the Bears overhauled their coaching staff, the Lions are replacing both coordinators, and the Vikings have a new quarterback. It’s true that Green Bay’s defense lacks a good pass rush and has limitations at corner, but Jeff Hafley proved to be a major upgrade at defensive coordinator last year over Joe Barry. The defense has great safeties and now plays like a well-coached unit where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
If you think the Packers will be a top-eight offense again (I do), then expect them to go over their win total and be in the mix for an NFC North title.
Bet: Packers over 9.5 wins (-110) and win the NFC North outright (+250)
6. Who’s the surprise playoff team with a win total of 7.5 or lower? The first team I have circled is the Raiders.
As my colleague Sheil Kapadia pointed out on The Ringer NFL Show, Pete Carroll has been a football head coach longer than I’ve been alive, and his teams haven’t won fewer than seven games in a season since 1994. The Raiders are replacing a lot of their defensive snaps, but it’s not like the defense was a major strength for them last season anyway. Defensive coordinator Patrick Graham has done a good job of building a defense that takes away explosive plays and forces teams to be methodical. That should be enough. The reason for Raiders optimism is that, more than any other team this offseason, the Raiders have high upside with a new coach and a new quarterback.
The pass offense was 28th in dropback EPA last season because Gardner Minshew and Aidan O’Connell are not starting NFL quarterbacks. The additions of Geno Smith and rookie running back Ashton Jeanty give the Raiders legitimate offensive upside. And since I’m not as high as the oddsmakers on the Broncos and Chargers, the door seems ajar for the Raiders to sneak their way to nine wins and a potential wild-card spot in the AFC.
Bet: Raiders over 6.5 wins (-125) and make the playoffs (+320)
7. Even though the Seahawks lost Pete Carroll and Geno Smith to the Raiders, Seattle is underrated heading into year two under Mike Macdonald.
Given that Seattle won 10 games last year and its win total this year is 7.5, I don’t even need the Seahawks to improve. They just need to remain a league-average offense, and they’ll be in the mix as a playoff team. The Seahawks were the only team in the NFL to win 10 games last year and miss the playoffs. I understand that they are replacing a lot of names like Smith and DK Metcalf, but last year’s offense wasn’t that good, so the actual production they’re replacing is less than you’d think. Seattle finished 18th in DVOA on offense and 10th on defense (despite a ton of injuries) last season. We saw the Ravens defense take a big step forward in Macdonald’s second year as a defensive coordinator, and Seattle looks like a defense with top-five potential.
The reason I’m optimistic that Seattle can overcome the losses of Smith and Metcalf is the addition of former Saints offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak. Before everyone on the Saints got hurt last season, Kubiak was doing a stellar job of scheming around their offensive line deficiencies and getting excellent production out of that offense. There’s a scenario where Kubiak and Macdonald are considered one of the best schematic duos in the league by year’s end.
Bet: Seahawks over 7.5 wins (-140) and make the playoffs (+165)
8. Among the four clear MVP favorites, one name has the strongest narrative on his side entering the 2025 season.
If I could play out any betting hypothetical from the NFL last year, I’d love to have seen what the discourse on the MVP award would have been if the Bengals sneaked into the playoffs despite one of the worst defenses in the NFL. Could Joe Burrow have stolen the MVP from Josh Allen? Cincinnati’s bad defense and poor special teams unit cost the team multiple games and a playoff spot. The Bengals did finally (sorta) pay Trey Hendrickson, and, in theory, you would expect some type of dead cat bounce (no pun intended) for the defense this season.
Traditionally, to be in contention for MVP, you have to be a quarterback, win your division, and get a no. 1 or no. 2 seed in the playoffs. That doesn’t seem likely for the Bengals. Usually, fewer team wins are a tough thing to overcome, but the narrative might be incredibly strong for Burrow given that all anyone can talk about this preseason is how bad the Bengals defense is.
The MVP market has a clear top four: Lamar Jackson is the favorite, followed by Josh Allen, Burrow, and Patrick Mahomes. At this point, Mahomes seems like he doesn’t get credit for simply winning (in the eyes of MVP voters), and I’m not really buying the huge Mahomes statistical leap that would be necessary to earn him the award.
Repeat winners are quite rare (Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers are the only players to repeat this century), which doesn’t bode well for Allen. I think in a year when there are four quarterbacks clearly above the rest, we’ll all go into the season acknowledging that Burrow has the “worst overall team” narrative, and that makes him worth a flier for MVP at +650. He’s also the only one of the four who doesn’t have an MVP, and that could make it “his turn.”
The Bengals defense will not be good, which will help Burrow’s statistical case. If the defense can avoid outright disaster scenarios, then Burrow can get to 11 wins and win the MVP.
Bet: Joe Burrow to win MVP (+650)
9. If you’re looking for an MVP candidate who isn’t one of the elite four, you have to search for upside in a crowded NFC field.
If you’re looking for a potential long-shot MVP winner, I think it’s much better to look at the NFC than the AFC. Because of how much superior quarterback talent exists in the AFC, those teams all have considerably higher floors, and trying to steal a top seed or outperform those guys is really difficult. This throws out long shots like Justin Herbert, C.J. Stroud, and Trevor Lawrence.
Jayden Daniels has a potential narrative case to win the award if the Commanders take a step forward, but I already wrote why I’m dubious of Washington. His odds are already factoring in his upside after a historic rookie season, so there’s not much value in betting on him.
Jalen Hurts has a really interesting MVP candidacy argument. You saw the passing upside for him in both the NFC championship game and the Super Bowl. The Eagles should win a lot of games, the offense has a very high floor, and Hurts will have good counting stats, in part because of the tush push. All of that makes him a very viable candidate.
But as the discourse this summer has shown, a lot of the media is looking for reasons to credit everyone else for the Eagles’ success instead of Hurts. It’s true that he was inconsistent from the pocket last season, and the passing game was clunky at best for large portions of the campaign. Saquon Barkley’s rushing success takes a lot of the oxygen away from a potential Hurts MVP case, so I’m not investing in him.
As a result, the two best MVP long shots to me are Jordan Love and Brock Purdy. I talked earlier about how I expect the Packers to be a top-eight offense yet again under Matt LaFleur, and Green Bay is my pick to win the NFC North. If they achieve both of those things, it’ll probably be because Love stayed healthy and improved his consistency.
At +2500, I think Love has a real chance at MVP. If it’s not Love, the next name that popped up on my radar was Purdy. Two years ago, Purdy had one of the most efficient quarterback seasons ever. He was in the mix for MVP until Christmas, when Lamar Jackson started to outshine him.
Purdy wasn’t in a position two years ago in his first full season to receive the necessary credit for the offense’s success. With the injury to Brandon Aiyuk, the departure of Deebo Samuel, and the uncertainty surrounding San Francisco as a whole, a great offensive year for Purdy would put him in the mix. The Niners have the easiest schedule in the NFL and a wonderful path to a no. 1 seed if things go well.
Bet: Jordan Love (+2500) and Brock Purdy (+3000) to win MVP
10. Nico Collins was a top-three receiver in the NFL when he was healthy last season, and he’s the best long shot on the board for Offensive Player of the Year now that Houston’s offense has upside again.
The top four receivers in yards per route run last season were Puka Nacua, Rashee Rice, A.J. Brown, and Nico Collins. All of them missed games due to injuries, but there’s one player who stands out to me on this list. The uncertainty around Matthew Stafford’s health makes Nacua almost unbettable. The suspension risk for Rice takes him off the list, and the Eagles’ low-volume passing offense means that Saquon Barkley takes up all of Brown’s OPOY oxygen. That leaves Collins as my favorite long-shot winner for the award. It’s no secret that the Texans offense was a mess last year. It couldn’t run the ball on early downs, C.J. Stroud took a step backward, and the offensive line struggled. One thing that remained was Stroud’s special connection with Collins. He was among the league leaders in yards before he suffered a hamstring injury, and he should be top five in the odds for the award this season.
Bet: Nico Collins to win Offensive Player of the Year (+2000)
11. The NFL added a new award this year, Protector of the Year, which honors the best offensive lineman, and by rule, we’re required to bet on it.
Unlike other NFL awards, we have no idea what the precedent or criteria will be for the league’s offensive lineman award. As long as Jeff Stoutland is the Eagles’ offensive line coach, it’s a pretty safe bet that the Eagles will have one of the best offensive lines in the league. There might be better tackles—Buffalo’s Dion Dawkins is underrated, San Francisco’s Trent Williams is a stalwart, and Detroit’s Penei Sewell is the league’s best young tackle—but Philadelphia’s Lane Johnson is the kind of respected name who carries the weight to be a legacy winner of a new award.
I have enough concerns about the quality of the lines in Detroit and San Francisco to avoid Sewell and Williams.
Bet: Lane Johnson to win Protector of the Year (+750)
