The Ringer’s 2026 Preseason NFL Power Rankings

The Rams have the best collection of star talent in the league right now, are the most exciting team to talk about, and have the best Super Bowl odds according to FanDuel—and this was true before defensive tackle Aaron Donald came out of retirement. Los Angeles was the only team that could match up with and equal Seattle at its best last season, and then it went and added cornerback Trent McDuffie and edge rusher Myles Garrett to tip the scales in its favor. With the new additions to the defense, reigning MVP Matthew Stafford back at quarterback, and head coach Sean McVay calling the offense, the Rams could have the league’s best offense and defense by season’s end.

But despite its no. 1 ranking on this list, this team has more land mines than most of this year’s other supposed contenders. Stafford’s potential back issues will loom over every dropback, even if he gets through the entire season healthy. Los Angeles didn’t add much depth to its offensive line, and its backups are concerning across the board. Receiver Puka Nacua and tackle Alaric Jackson could miss time due to NFL suspensions, as Nacua is being sued for assault and Jackson was arrested after a report of domestic violence. Because they have an unforgiving schedule and a roster without much depth, I’m curious about whether the Rams’ star talent can maintain peak form all year. 

I’m personally not buying into the “nobody believes in us” story line about Seattle because I’ve had it as a top-three team as far back as Week 10 last season. There’s no respectable opinion about the upcoming season that would leave the reigning champions out of the Super Bowl picture. Nobody has to apologize to the Seahawks for the collective excitement about the Rams or for expecting them to take a small step backward after losing some defensive starters and former offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak to different teams. Seattle is still a deep team with the best defense in the league, an elite receiver, and the best home field advantage in football. I’m not going to feign concern about quarterback Sam Darnold, either. He is cemented as an effective passer and as a champion, and he never needed to be this team’s hero in the first place. 

Seattle is a bona fide championship front-runner with him and one of the only teams that doesn’t have a ton to prove to open the season. What I will be looking at, though, is how the Seahawks play against the Patriots and Chargers in the first month of the year. Both AFC teams are trying to claw their way to the top of their conference and will use their games against the Seahawks as barometers of how close they are to contending. If the Seahawks win those games, they’ll confirm their readiness to repeat as champions.

Nobody should question that the Rams and Seahawks are the top two teams at the start of the season. But I may be the only non-Broncos fan who thinks that Denver is closer to being in their tier than any other team in the league. The Broncos have all the pieces they’ll need to win their division and be an AFC front-runner again, and that was already the case before they traded for receiver Jaylen Waddle. Now this team is entering the season with arguably a top-three defense, a top-five offensive line, and a top-10 receiving corps led by Waddle and Courtland Sutton.

My eyes will be fixed on quarterback Bo Nix and offensive coordinator Davis Webb to open the season because that pair will determine whether the Broncos can reach their ceiling. Nix isn’t an All-Pro talent as a passer, but he has just enough physical tools to execute Denver’s offense—and now I’m looking forward to seeing whether Webb can coax another step forward out of Nix or add new layers to the offense to keep life easy for his quarterback. Five of Denver’s first six opponents made the playoffs last year, so Nix and Webb need to be at their best from day one.

The stage is set for Houston to join Philadelphia and Seattle as championship teams led by their respective defenses. The Texans’ starting defense is without any obvious holes, and they might have the best lineup of second-string defensive players in football. If edge rusher Will Anderson can make another leap in sack production, he could plant his flag as the best overall defensive player in the league. And if it’s not Anderson, the cornerback duo of Derek Stingley Jr. and Kamari Lassiter might lead the way for this unit in coverage.

But Houston's defense isn’t the unit that needs to justify this team’s top-five ranking. The Texans haven’t been among the AFC’s elite because of how poorly their offense has performed in the playoffs, and the bitter taste of last year’s divisional loss can be washed away only if the Texans play effectively on offense against the Bills and Bengals to open the year. This offense needs to make a statement early on. If it doesn't, my impression is that it’ll go through the same kind of season all over again.

Of all the teams that have made major coaching or personnel changes, the Bills seem to have kept the lowest profile in the lead-up to the regular season. After the disastrous press conference that team owner Terry Pegula and team president Brandon Beane gave this offseason (in the wake of firing Sean McDermott), the Bills quietly went about trading for receiver D.J. Moore, adding depth on both sides of the ball, and handing the defense over to highly reputable coordinator Jim Leonhard.

Last year felt like a step backward for Buffalo; it lost the division to New England and beat itself against the Broncos in the postseason. Now that coaching changes have been made and Josh Allen has a no. 1 receiver again, I want to see Buffalo leave no doubt about its place in the NFL hierarchy this year. That means winning at least three of its first four games (against the Texans, Lions, Chargers, and Patriots), looking like a well-oiled machine around Allen, and making it clear that it should be discussed with the same kind of certainty that we have about Los Angeles and Seattle. If this team stumbles out of the gate and starts the year under .500, first-year head coach Joe Brady may be bound for disappointment, and the pressure will ratchet up.

Are the Patriots so underrated that I’ve actually overrated them to start the year? It's almost inevitable that New England will lose more regular-season games this season than the three it did last year, but this roster is considerably better than it was just a season ago on offense and is set up for another good performance on defense.

A.J. Brown changed the Eagles offense into a (mostly) unguardable machine over four years, and I'd predict that his presence on New England’s offense will also be transformative. Even if he turns out to be a diminished version of himself, just having a receiver like Brown on the perimeter should make life easier for quarterback Drake Maye and the rest of his teammates. New England opens the season against two good secondaries in Seattle and Pittsburgh, and I’m excited to see whether Brown’s impact will be immediately felt by those two teams, which both had success against the Patriots’ passing game last season.

Pressure is high in Baltimore, on multiple fronts. New head coach Jesse Minter is taking over a team that’s had Super Bowl expectations for all of the 2020s—and has made only one appearance in a conference championship game in that time. New offensive coordinator Declan Doyle is responsible for leading an offense that features former MVP quarterback Lamar Jackson and future Hall of Fame running back Derrick Henry—and it's his first time calling plays in the NFL. And Jackson will be put under the microscope again this season, especially as he approaches 30 and nears the end of his current contract (which expires after the 2027 season).

Baltimore needs young, difference-making players on both sides of the ball to solidify its hopes of contention. Rookie guard Vega Ioane’s play will probably be the deciding factor in the Ravens’ run game. Receivers Ja’Kobi Lane and Elijah Sarratt need to earn Jackson’s trust. And multiple defensive players that Baltimore’s drafted in the past three offseasons need to break out. When the Ravens open the season, I’ll be acutely tuned into which young guys are earning legitimate roles on this team.

The discourse surrounding quarterback Jalen Hurts and the Eagles offense is as rancid as America’s recalled beef. Critiques of and doubts about Hurts’s play have existed for the past half decade, and they have reached a fever pitch recently. This is the first time since 2021 that he won’t have an All-Pro receiver to lean on, providing more fuel for his skeptics. And now that he’s learning a new offense, we’re bound for a season that puts every dropback of his under the kind of scrutiny that no other playoff-caliber quarterback will deal with this year.

But he and this offense do have something to prove. Philadelphia’s defense should be one of the five best in football, the rushing attack should improve now that Philadelphia is adopting a Shanahan-McVay-style scheme, and receiver Devonta Smith is there to funnel targets toward. If Hurts wants to quiet the noise, Philadelphia’s offense needs to look unstoppable against questionable defenses like Washington’s and Chicago’s early on in the year.

I’m not quite sure that this roster has enough star power to win its own division—let alone its conference—but I’ve bought into what the Chargers have built this offseason. With new coordinators (Mike McDaniel on offense, Chris O’Leary on defense) at the helm, Los Angeles is both developing its own iteration of the Shanahan-McVay offensive system and maintaining its version of the Mike Macdonald–Jesse Minter scheme that’s been on the cutting edge of modern defense.

This team has the systems in place to build a contender. And if the offensive line is solid enough to keep quarterback Justin Herbert upright, we could see L.A. take a leap toward a bona fide championship level. 

Cincinnati did exactly what analysts, fans, and quarterback Joe Burrow have been asking for the past few seasons: It showed some urgency and added enough defensive talent to get back into championship contention. Now that the Bengals have defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence to anchor the front seven, we can start taking them a bit more seriously again.

Whether the Bengals deserve to be in the top 10 will be tested and answered quickly. The Buccaneers, Texans, Steelers, and Jaguars will present different challenges for this defense, but each will give us insight into whether this unit deserves to be trusted in high-leverage situations. I’m hoping that Lawrence can be a game-altering force for the Bengals because the NFL is more fun when Burrow has a legitimate pathway to compete.

Truthfully, I don’t know what to expect from Jacksonville because of how much this team changed in the second half of last season. The Jaguars should be one of the league’s best teams after winning eight of their last nine regular-season games in 2025 behind an efficient passing game and an aggressive defense. But this team lacks top-end talent in the offensive trenches and has a subpar defensive secondary.

What could keep Jacksonville among the contenders is former first-round pick Travis Hunter. The two-way experiment of playing him as a receiver and cornerback was cut short by his torn LCL last year, so we don't have enough data to determine whether it’ll work in the long term. While he was gone, Jacksonville traded for receiver Jakobi Meyers, and receiver Parker Washington broke out as a dependable target for quarterback Trevor Lawrence. I’ll be watching to see how Hunter fits into this offense now and whether he can provide enough game-breaking talent to get this team through a difficult slate of opponents—Jacksonville will face off against Denver, New England, and Cincinnati in three of its first four games.

Hope springs eternal at the start of every NFL season, and that usually means every football hipster is buying into the Packers being the NFC team to take a major leap forward. The Packers are usually one of the league’s youngest teams with several above-average offensive linemen and a just-good-enough defense. This team’s roster-building strategy keeps things stable and leads us national analysts to believe the next big step is around the corner.

But I’m taking a different tack this season and stepping off the bandwagon. I think it's more likely that the Packers will be just a garden-variety good team instead of a fringe contender. Green Bay’s depth on both sides of the ball is less impressive than it was just last year, especially in the trenches. And the defense will have to go for at least a month without edge rusher Micah Parsons, so I’m concerned that we’ll see some significant holes in Green Bay’s back seven. Even if this team starts out hot against a weak schedule for the first month of the season, I’d still advise holding out on buying any stock in the Packers.

Just about every outcome is on the table for the Chiefs. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes could have his magic back and drag Kansas City back into Super Bowl contention—or his heroics could go to waste because of a receiving corps that I’d rank in the bottom half of the league. The addition of running back Kenneth Walker III could give this offense some badly needed explosive play potential, or the Chiefs could be inconsistent in the stale, RPO-heavy scheme that head coach Andy Reid has run for the past decade. Fresh, young legs might keep Kansas City’s defense among the league’s best, or they'll be so inexperienced that they make the losses of defensive starters Trent McDuffie, Jaylen Watson, and Bryan Cook hard to overcome.

It would be dishonest to rank the Chiefs among the obvious contenders given all the questions I have about this team. If I’m to believe things are back to how they once were, Kansas City needs to take advantage of its easy schedule to start the season.

For the first time in quarterback Dak Prescott’s career, he doesn’t have anything to prove. He got through last season healthy, led one of the league's best offenses, revived receiver George Pickens’s career, and isn’t mired in any contract-related drama. Even for Prescott’s biggest skeptics, I’d imagine his place in the quarterback hierarchy is stable at this point; the expectation now is that he’ll give the Cowboys a playoff-caliber offense as long as he’s their starter.

What I’m less confident in is this defense, even after the team added talent over the past year. Aside from star defensive tackle Quinnen Williams, there’s no consistent disrupter in the entire front seven. I expect Williams to wreck games and force his way back into the discussion as one of the league’s top three defensive tackles, but it may not matter if the edge rushing rotation around him can’t use the attention he draws to its advantage. If teams like the Ravens, Texans, and Buccaneers are able to control the line of scrimmage against Dallas’s defense, I’ll have to reevaluate my belief that Dallas could be a surprise contender in the NFC this year.

I have every finger crossed that the 49ers get to Week 1 healthy and that this team can contend again. Tight end George Kittle will be back from his torn Achilles early in the season, edge rusher Nick Bosa is working his way back from his torn ACL, and the rest of this team’s most important players should be in uniform to open the season in Australia. 

Last year gave us proof that head coach Kyle Shanahan could construct an unstoppable offense without consistent production from his wide receivers, and now the 49ers have veteran Mike Evans and exciting rookie De’Zhaun Stribling to provide a complementary mix of dependable production and explosive-play potential. Three of San Francisco’s first five opponents have elite secondaries (Los Angeles, Denver, and Seattle), and I can’t wait to watch this team’s passing game get tested early in the year.

This might be the most banged-up team in football entering Week 1. Safeties Brian Branch (torn Achilles) and Kerby Joseph (bone bruise) still haven’t returned to practice after season-ending injuries last year. Cornerback Terrion Arnold was waived earlier in the offseason as a result of his arrest on eight felony charges, including armed robbery and kidnapping, in Florida. Backup running back Isiah Pacheco is dealing with a back injury that landed him on IR, and the Lions don’t have enough quality running back depth behind Jahmyr Gibbs for me to feel good.

The Lions have been marred by injury issues like these the past few seasons, but I refuse to rank them lower than 16th because their championship potential is still evident. They could have the best offense in football. Receiver Jameson Williams is the Detroit offensive player I’m most excited to watch this season. If he lights up defenses deep downfield to start the season, the attention opponents will have to devote to him will open up the offense for everyone else.

A handful of teams will fail to return to the playoffs this year—most likely, it'll be the teams that forced an unsustainable number of turnovers and won more than their fair share of one-score games last season.

Chicago meets both qualifications, making the start of the season tense for Bears fans hoping that head coach Ben Johnson and quarterback Caleb Williams are ushering in an era of long-term Bears competitiveness, which has eluded this franchise for most of its existence. If Chicago’s defense takes its expected step backward, Williams will need every bit of his heroics to win games—making the Bears must-see TV every week.

If we were ranking teams by the 52 players on the roster besides the starting quarterback, I would be all in on the Steelers as a top-15 team. Receivers DK Metcalf and Michael Pittman Jr. provide complementary skill sets for this passing game. The Steelers have several useful tight ends, a capable duo at running back, and a young offensive line I believe can thrive in a run-first, play-action-based system. Add in a defense with few weaknesses offenses can exploit, and I have the impression this team will factor into the playoff race once again.

But I refuse to ride this roller coaster with quarterback Aaron Rodgers and head coach Mike McCarthy. I don’t believe Rodgers can physically give this offense the consistent deep passing it needs to be its best—nor do I trust McCarthy to scheme up enough answers to help make life easier on his quarterback. This team has enough talent to compete with the true contenders in the league, but there’s a chance things will be so stale that Pittsburgh will bottom out to end Rodgers’s career.

Indianapolis’s starting quarterback, Daniel Jones, is coming back from a torn Achilles. Top receiver Alec Pierce is recovering from ankle surgery he received in the spring, and there’s no guarantee he’ll be ready for the season opener. And this receiving corps is so light on depth that 34-year-old Keenan Allen will probably have to play a key role in the Colts’ passing game. It’s hard to imagine this team recapturing the hot streak it was on to start last season—even if running back Jonathan Taylor is the best at his position this year.

Injuries cost the Colts an opportunity to be the surprise team of 2025, and now they look destined to spend another season hovering around .500 in the hope that they can sneak into the playoffs as the seventh seed. It is imperative that the Colts get off to a good start to improve their chances. But they’ll be facing off against Baltimore, Kansas City, and Houston to start the season.

Quarterback Kyler Murray has won the job over J.J. McCarthy, and we somehow got through the entire competition without much drama or suspense. Murray was just better, and the offense has a better chance to compete for a playoff spot in an ultracompetitive NFC North as a result.

Now that we know who’ll lead this offense to start the year, I’m hoping we’ll get back to seeing receiver Justin Jefferson produce like an all-time great. Outside of A.J. Brown’s last two years in Philadelphia, I can’t remember a receiver making a 1,000-yard season look so easy without making a game-changing impact. To open the year the Vikings offense will match up against Green Bay and Chicago, two teams with relatively weak cornerbacks. I want to see Jefferson cook both secondaries and make himself a factor in Offensive Player of the Year conversations again.

Do you know how uninspiring a team’s quarterback situation has to be for no one to have irrational expectations to open the season? Carolina’s 7.5 win total isn’t just a betting line; it's a statement on how stuck this franchise is. Because the Panthers play in the NFC South, they can conceivably win their division, but they don’t factor into the championship conversation. Quarterback Bryce Young is approaching the end of his rookie deal with no extension imminent, effectively making this year an all-or-nothing proposition for his future with the Panthers—and possibly for his future as a presumed starter in this league.

Young will be facing off against Chicago’s and Detroit’s patchy secondaries in the first month of the season, but he would need some truly stellar performances to alter my perception of him. With early apologies to Panthers fans, I will be ready to mock-draft this team a new quarterback if I have to watch him start out the year with the 140-yard, no-touchdown performances that were typical last season.

I spent most of the offseason wondering whether the Saints could be a sneaky entrant into this year’s playoff picture. Then rookie receiver Jordyn Tyson landed on IR, and veteran receiver Chris Olave scared me with a hard fall in practice—reminding me of how fragile New Orleans’s 2026 campaign might be. There’s little receiver depth behind those two; plus, center Erik McCoy has played only 14 games in the past two seasons, guard Cesar Ruiz has been either banged up or bad in the past two years, and the defense as a whole is light on the top-shelf talent necessary to consistently rush the quarterback and cover elite receivers. 

New Orleans needs quarterback Tyler Shough and its coaching staff to (again) do the heavy lifting this roster isn’t ready to do. A fun and unexpected 2025 might have set the stage for a letdown in 2026, and season-opening matchups against the Lions and Ravens might be only the beginning of a tough year.

We will find out nearly instantly whether head coach John Harbaugh has one more late-career surge in him—or whether he’s this year’s version of Pete Carroll in Las Vegas. The Giants play the Cowboys and Rams in prime time in back-to-back weeks, which will put his entirely new staff and young quarterback, Jaxson Dart, under national scrutiny from the jump.

Harbaugh and Dart aren't the only ones in the pressure cooker to start the year, either. Rookie linebacker Arvell Reese will be going up against quarterbacks Dak Prescott and Matthew Stafford, and rookie guard Francis Mauigoa will be matched up against defensive tackles Quinnen Williams and Aaron Donald. By the next edition of our power rankings, we will have an idea of whether these guys were ready for the brightest lights to start their careers.

I was most excited to watch Minnesota’s and Atlanta’s quarterback competitions entering training camp, but both were underwhelming. The Vikings ended theirs because there was a clear winner, and the Falcons have yet to end theirs because all their options seem to be too injured or inept to start.

Quarterback Michael Penix Jr. was recently cleared to return to practice and will instantly be a factor in this competition despite being a limited participant during the spring and summer. His top competitor is Tua Tagovailoa, who failed to cement himself as the Falcons starter despite having the runway to make the job his in Penix’s absence from game action. And because neither guy can be trusted to stay healthy for a season—let alone perform consistently—the Falcons are carrying four quarterbacks on their active roster after cut-down day. With this much chaos coming into the season, I won’t be able to look away from this competition for the first month.

The Raiders are proof that hiring a new head coach and drafting a quarterback can buy a franchise a healthy amount of goodwill, but I’m not buying into the hope. This roster is in a weird spot, and I don’t think this franchise has as much of a plan as its ownership lets on. Las Vegas spent above market value on multiple free agents, lost expected draft capital in the failed trade of edge rusher Maxx Crosby, and has far-below-average talent at receiver and defensive back entering the season.

The only real intrigue I see is Fernando Mendoza’s path to supplanting veteran quarterback Kirk Cousins as starter. If the Raiders are 1-3 or worse after the opening month, will their supposed discipline in letting Mendoza learn from the sideline hold, or will head coach Klint Kubiak want a look at the future of his franchise sooner?

The Cardinals may end up with the worst record in football because of their brutal schedule, but this is far from the worst roster in the league. Tight end Trey McBride is looking for his third straight 1,000-yard season, and receiver Michael Wilson had a breakout year when the football world stopped paying attention to Arizona—finishing the 2025 season with 1,006 yards and seven touchdowns. And once running back Jeremiyah Love returns from his high ankle sprain, the Cardinals will have one of the better offensive skill-position groups in the NFC.

The problem for Arizona is that this group would need to average 28 points just to have a shot at winning games. The Chargers, Seahawks, and 49ers are their first three opponents, and life doesn’t get much easier after that. Fantasy football managers will get maximum value for Arizona’s offensive players, but its defense just doesn’t have enough talent to keep most games interesting.

I’m starting to second-guess the optimism I had about quarterback Cam Ward. I know it was only the preseason, but he looked shaky in action; he finished his two starts, against the 49ers and Seahawks, with six sacks and a 69.1 passer rating. He still makes mistakes with his pocket management and invites pressure, and he’s struggling to play efficiently within the structure of the offense. I’m willing to withhold any legitimate panic until later in the year, but we need to see some proof of concept this season to keep questions about him being a bust at bay.

He’ll also need some help from rookie receiver Carnell Tate, whom the team drafted fourth overall (but whom we should also keep reasonable expectations for, as this receiving class was particularly weak). Rookie receivers rarely dominate to start their careers, so I don’t need to see him play like Ja’Marr Chase as much as I need to see him consistently get separation and give Ward a dependable option. If their connection lags in the first month of the season, I will start raising some (way-too-early) red flags.

Whatever optimistic interest I had in Washington’s new-look offense vanished the moment left tackle Laremy Tunsil suffered a torn triceps that will cost him most—if not all—of this season. Quarterback Jayden Daniels’s best offensive lineman is now guard Sam Cosmi, and we saw what happened to Daniels and this offense without reliable offensive line play last year. Daniels’s scrambling ability will always be an issue for defenses, but he can’t use it to punish them nearly as often if he’s constantly under pressure or doesn’t have the help of an early-down rushing attack.

New offensive coordinator David Blough will be under the most pressure to change this offense’s trajectory after a rough 2025 season—and he has the poor fortune of matching up against the Eagles and Seahawks defenses in the first month of the season. I can’t imagine this offense will move the ball on the ground against either, so I’ll be watching to see whether he can draw up a good enough passing game to make either match interesting.

Can New York start the season off well enough to keep head coach Aaron Glenn off the hot seat? That hinges mostly on quarterback Geno Smith, offensive coordinator Frank Reich, and a young offense. Just by not starting Justin Fields, the Jets offense has the potential to be more of a near-average unit than the nonfunctional unit it was last season, and the run game will benefit from an offensive line that I expect to get average or better play from each of its starters.

For the first time in a while, I’m less worried about the Jets offense than I am about its defense. New York’s starting defense is a hodgepodge of players with differing skill sets that make it difficult to project play style or production. The Jets have games against the Packers, Lions, and Bears early in the season, so any good offensive performance from New York might be rendered obsolete if this defense gets run off the field.

The Browns are both starting quarterback Deshaun Watson and keeping all three of his backups on the active roster, a clear sign that this team cannot be taken seriously. Watson never looked like a starting quarterback in Cleveland before tearing his Achilles twice, and he certainly doesn’t appear to be one now. He could just be a placeholder for the first month of the season—taking lumps before the franchise hands the reins off to Shedeur Sanders.

What are we supposed to project about this Browns season that isn’t enveloped in misery? They may not be competitive in a game until mid-October (when they face the Jets). I was looking forward to watching rookie receivers Denzel Boston and KC Concepcion, but not at the expense of suffering through Watson—or any other quarterback Cleveland puts on the field. At least we’ll have a fun defense to watch each week, and part of me would be entertained if the Browns defense is wrecking games for offenses like the Steelers and Jaguars in the first month of the season.

Head coach Jeff Hafley told ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith that this season’s successes won’t be measured by wins or losses—a certain sign that this year is going to make for a hard watch in Miami. No football coach would totally wave the white flag before a season begins, but Hafley is making sure that expectations are as low as possible in 2026 and that fans should be seeking moral victories instead of real ones.

If there’s one thing worth watching to start the year, it’s Miami’s offensive line. Former head coach Mike McDaniel may not be there anymore, but he and his staff really improved the line's performance in the run game—and the Dolphins drafted another good run blocker in rookie guard Kadyn Proctor. If the line plays well to open the year, the Dolphins running game could be an enjoyable watch while your favorite team’s game is on a commercial break.