| 2027 DRAFT – QUARTERBACKS CAN CHANGE Ryan Wilson of CBSSports.com, looking at history, says QBs ARCH MANNING and DANTE MOORE won’t necessarily be the first QBs off the board next spring: Every few years, we get to November wondering how a quarterback nobody was talking about over the summer suddenly became a first-rounder. Joe Burrow wasn’t a first-round prospect entering his final season at LSU; in fact, he had to transfer out of Ohio State because Dwayne Haskins beat him out for the starting job. Jayden Daniels wasn’t viewed as a future No. 2 pick before his second year at LSU, and like Burrow, he had to transfer to even get that chance. Daniel Jones entered his final season at Duke with virtually none of the hype that follows a future top-10 selection. Eight months later, the Giants took him sixth overall. Burrow, Daniels and Jones didn’t take the same path to the first round, but their eventual landing spots would’ve been difficult to predict before their final college seasons. That got me wondering whether we’re looking at this the wrong way: Instead of arguing every summer about which well-known name should be QB1, could we identify the quarterbacks most likely to become first-round picks before everyone else catches on? That’s the question I wanted to answer with the 2027 class. I went through every draft class back to 2015 and looked at the quarterbacks who made big late-career jumps, the supposed first-rounders who slipped and the strange cases where the league’s evaluation ultimately went somewhere the numbers didn’t. Then I went back to my 2027 notes to see where the history matched what I’d seen on tape — and, maybe more importantly, where it didn’t. For context: Based on my summer scouting, Dante Moore and Arch Manning are my top two quarterbacks, and both carry top-five grades on my overall board. Brendan Sorsby and Julian Sayin round out my current first-round quarterbacks, followed by Jayden Maiava and Darian Mensah early in Round 2. That’s the scouting baseline for our purposes here. Now let’s see what history thinks. Meet FRED: Our First-Round Readiness ScoreI built a model around the question I really wanted to answer: How close is a quarterback to looking like a future first-round pick? The result is the First-Round Readiness Score — or FRED, for short. FRED looks at the things that have historically separated first-round quarterbacks — passing efficiency, touchdown and interception rates, QBR, experience and, importantly, a quarterback’s best three- and five-game stretches. The idea isn’t to predict whether he’ll succeed in the NFL; it’s to measure how much his college performance, at that point in his career, resembles what we’ve historically seen from future first-round picks. The scale is intentionally easy to read: 50 is the historical first-round threshold. But for what we’re trying to learn here, when a quarterback gets there may be just as important as whether he gets there at all. The most revealing FRED score turned out to be the one before his final college season because it tells us which quarterbacks had already started playing like future top picks with another season still to go. And here’s where FRED gets interesting: 22 quarterbacks in our historical sample had played enough football to reach a FRED score of 50 before their final seasons. All 22 became first-round picks. That doesn’t make 50 a magic draft grade — and we’ll get to the exceptions in a minute — but the timing matters. One quarterback in the 2027 class is already there. Ohio State’s Julian Sayin leads the way at 55.3, followed by USC’s Maiava (43.4), Oklahoma State’s Drew Mestemaker (40.4), Miami’s Mensah (39.4) and Sorsby (35.4). For perspective, Patrick Mahomes was at 55.7 entering his final season at Texas Tech, Burrow was at 58.6 before his 2019 breakout and Josh Allen was at 51.6 for Wyoming. Most recently, Daniels was at 49.5 before his Heisman campaign. I’ll occasionally use one other number: Historical First-Round Probability, which looks across a quarterback’s broader college résumé. Think of it as a second opinion; for identifying who may be on the verge of making the leap, FRED is the headline number. How developed were recent QB classes before their final seasons?Draft class Best preseason FRED scores Top-3 avg. QBs ≥50 Eventual Round 1 2020 Tagovailoa (87.1); Love (61.2); Burrow (58.6) 68.9 4 42022 Pickett (54.4); Howell (29.2); Corral (17.1) 33.6 1 12024 Williams (79.5); Maye (78.0); Nix (68.8) 75.5 5 62025 Dart (54.7); Gabriel (39.4); McCord (38.9) 44.3 1 12026 Mendoza (55.7); Klubnik (36.4); Beck (21.2) 37.8 1 12027 Sayin (55.3); Maiava (43.4); Mestemaker (40.4) 46.4 1 1 That’s what makes this class so interesting. The top three QBs have an average FRED score of 46.4, third among the six classes in the table above, and actually ahead of the 2025 and 2026 groups. But there’s still a sizable gap between them and the loaded 2020 and 2024 classes, which entered their final college seasons with top-three averages of 68.9 and 75.5. Sayin has already crossed 50, but Maiava and Mestemaker haven’t. So this isn’t quite 2022, but it isn’t 2020 or 2024, either. There is an important distinction: Ty Simpson isn’t missing from the 2026 row because his score was bad; he just hadn’t played enough snaps to have a meaningful FRED score. Kyler Murray is an even more extreme example. He entered his final Oklahoma season having attempted just 18 passes over the previous two years, then won the Heisman and went No. 1 overall. Not enough information isn’t the same thing as a low score. That’s important when we’re trying to figure out young quarterbacks such as CJ Carr, but it’s much harder to use as an explanation for experienced players who remain well below 50. FRED isn’t magic — and Cam Ward proved itAll 22 quarterbacks in the historical sample who reached 50 before their final seasons became first-round picks. But the 22-for-22 finding sounds almost too clean, so I tried to break it. And … I found three exceptions, although all three were right on the doorstep. Daniels was at 49.5 before his final season, Zach Wilson was at 48.9 and Josh Rosen was at 48.5. All three became first-round picks, though only one appears to have the makings of a franchise quarterback. FRED still can’t tell us whether NFL teams believe the traits, age, competition, medical history and everything else about a player should put him in the first-round conversation. But it’s a pretty good indicator. Daniels, Wilson and Rosen didn’t clear 50, but they didn’t miss by much. That’s a much different starting point than a quarterback entering his final season at 10 or 20 and needing to make the kind of leap Cam Ward eventually did. Ward is the real reason 50 can’t be treated as a magic number. Ward entered his final college season with a FRED score of 6.8. His Historical First-Round Probability was only 18.3%. Put simply, his body of work to that point looked very little like that of the quarterbacks who historically became first-round picks. Then he transferred from Washington State to Miami, and everything changed. Ward didn’t just put up bigger numbers at Miami. His passing efficiency jumped, his QBR exploded and the offense around him improved dramatically. Bill Connelly’s Offensive SP+ (which measures an offense’s efficiency while accounting for the quality of the opponents it faced) jumped from 31.0 at Washington State to 44.2 at Miami. That moved Ward from an offense well below what we typically see around first-round quarterbacks to one comfortably within that range. His FRED score jumped, too. And the scouting notes filled in what the numbers couldn’t: arm talent, creativity, pocket movement, throws from different platforms and a quarterback whose game appeared to be maturing. Ward never reached 50, but he showed Tennessee enough on tape to make him the No. 1 pick — and it was absolutely the right decision. That’s the exception worth remembering with this class. A low starting point isn’t a death sentence, and Ward is proof that a quarterback doesn’t have to reach 50 for the NFL to ultimately see a first-rounder. But he also shows just how much has to change when a quarterback enters his final season nowhere close to it. A quarterback sitting at 5 or 10 doesn’t need a nice season. He needs to make us rethink the player we thought we were evaluating in August. So who should we be watching in 2027?My big board starts with Moore and Manning, but history is much more interested in Maiava. Moore’s FRED score is 19.2, while Manning is at 3.2 (you read that right). Maiava is already at 43.4, second in the class. His 0.38 EPA per dropback is already above the 0.35 median for historical first-round quarterbacks, and his broader Historical First-Round Probability is 54.3%, first in the class. The USC quarterback hasn’t reached 50 yet, but history says the arrow is pointing up for the upcoming season. Dante MooreOREG • QB • #5That doesn’t make me ready to put Maiava ahead of Moore. The tape is why Moore is my QB1, and it’s as good as anyone’s in the class. His deep big-time-throw rate ranked in the 99th percentile, and his 38.3% Deep Alpha Rate — essentially the percentage of his deep throws that resulted in a completion or big-time throw — ranked in the 100th percentile. But his second-read passing grade was only 63.5, and his pressure grade fell to 51.0 compared with 92.6 from a clean pocket. Moore also finished at 0.21 EPA per dropback and 7.9 adjusted yards per attempt, both below the 25th-percentile marks for historical first-round quarterbacks. His path isn’t simply getting his EPA to, say, 0.35. It’s showing he can more consistently maintain that high-level play beyond his first read and when the pocket isn’t clean — two areas where the tape hasn’t yet matched what we see from him at his best. Arch ManningTEXAS • QB • #16With Manning, the disconnect is even more pronounced. In my notes, I saw a quarterback who navigates the pocket as well as anyone in the class, throws comebacks and deep hinges with anticipation and creates outside of structure — and he was noticeably better at all three over the second half of the season. Early on, though, he played hurried in the pocket, skipped reads and rushed throws, and made enough head-scratching decisions to leave you wondering what all the hype was about. The numbers tell us he still has plenty to prove: 0.20 EPA per dropback, 8.9 adjusted yards per attempt and a 32.9 Offensive SP+, nearly 10 points below the historical first-round median. I want to see the late-season version become the weekly version. Jayden MaiavaUSC • QB • #14Maiava is where scouting and history begin to converge. USC’s 38.9 Offensive SP+ is already close to the historical first-round range, which begins at 39.2. His win rate remains below the typical first-round level, and history tells us that matters: First-round quarterbacks have typically won a lot of games before the NFL ever gets involved. But if the passing holds, the offense gets better and the tape answers the remaining questions in my scouting report, history also tells us not to be surprised if Maiava is one of the QBs we’re talking about very differently by November. There are also some well-known names where the numbers are considerably more skeptical. LaNorris Sellers is the clearest example. His FRED score is 11.9 and his Historical First-Round Probability is 13.5% despite the first-round buzz that has followed him for much of his college career because of his size, arm and athleticism. That’s a significant disconnect for a player with his physical tools, and it makes his 2026 assignment fairly straightforward: The passing production has to start catching up to the traits. Sam Leavitt doesn’t have an eligible 2025 FRED score after his injury-shortened seven-game season left him at 239 attempts, 11 short of the model’s 250-attempt minimum. Demond Williams Jr. is at 22.6, Josh Hoover at 12.5, Drake Lindsey at 8.6 and Nico Iamaleava at 1.5. None of that means they can’t become first-rounders. Ward proved that. But it does mean a modest step forward almost certainly won’t be enough, particularly for the more experienced players in the group. And then there are the names history is telling us to watch a little more closely. Sayin is the glaring example because his 55.3 FRED score is the best in the class — and the only one at or above 50 — to go along with his 0.39 EPA per dropback last season. Mensah ranks fourth in the class with a FRED score of 39.4, and his move to Miami gives him a chance to make the kind of late-career jump we’ve seen from previous first-round risers (like, say, Ward). Trinidad Chambliss is already at 29.7 with 0.36 EPA per dropback; his biggest question is whether he can do it again over a larger sample. Mestemaker is at 40.4 after transferring from North Texas to Oklahoma State, and he’s gotten there in just 13 career games. A full season gives us a chance to find out whether that early production was the beginning of a legitimate first-round rise. And then there’s Sorsby, who is the strangest case of all. His FRED score is 35.4, fifth in the class, but his gambling issues mean he won’t play in 2026 and won’t get another season to answer the remaining on-field questions. When I watched him this summer, I saw first-round ability — a big arm, athleticism and one of the better downfield passers in the class — but also questions about working through reads, accuracy and anticipation. Now that evaluation is essentially frozen. What happens nextThere will still be exceptions, which is why none of these numbers gets veto power over the tape. But FRED can also provide useful context when a quarterback’s final season changes how we remember him. Several QBs we remember as unconventional first-round prospects had already reached 50 before their final seasons. Mahomes and Allen were above 50, Love was at 61.2 and Maye topped them all at 78.0. Their circumstances were atypical, and in some cases their final seasons created more questions than answers, but they’d already played like first-round quarterbacks much more than we may remember now. Love’s final season at Utah State was worse than the year before. Maye’s final season at North Carolina didn’t come close to matching his sophomore year, either. Neither suddenly stopped being a first-round talent. Sometimes the better question isn’t whether a quarterback improved every year; it’s whether he’d already shown enough that one uneven season shouldn’t erase it. Ward gives us the opposite extreme. He started nowhere close to 50, made an enormous leap without ever reaching it and gave the NFL enough evidence to take him No. 1. That’s why my scouting notes work with the historical model rather than answer to it. If Manning continues to improve while his historical profile remains ordinary, that’s a disagreement worth understanding. If Maiava keeps improving, history may have been onto something before the rest of us. And if a quarterback enters 2026 with a low FRED score and begins answering the concerns that held him back in August, those numbers should eventually move with the tape. And we’re going to find out. I’ll revisit this exercise around midseason to see who’s moving toward the historical first-round range and why, then we’ll do it again after the season. Maybe somebody makes the Burrow or Daniels leap. Maybe we find another Ward who changes the evaluation without ever crossing 50. We’re not trying to name the 2027 first-round quarterbacks before the season starts. We’re trying to know what they have to become, what it should look like when it starts happening — and which clues actually matter along the way. If the next Burrow or Daniels is somewhere in this class, the goal is simple: This time, don’t wait until November to notice. |
| BILL BARNWELL: 5 TEAMS WHO WILL IMPROVEBill Barnwell of ESPN.com makes his annual projection of 5 teams that will improve their win totals in 2026: Even by NFL standards, 2025 was a topsy-turvy season. Seven teams saw their records improve or decline by at least six wins, the most in any campaign since 2008. And though that’s a little more feasible in a 17-game season than it was in the 16-game era, the 10-game improvement by the Patriots, who improved from 4-13 to 14-3, was the largest by any team since 1999, when the Colts pulled that off in Peyton Manning’s second season. Teams hoping to emulate the Patriots might find a difficult path forward. The Pats made a major coaching upgrade by hiring Mike Vrabel, who had been one of the league’s best coaches during his time with the Titans before losing a power struggle in Nashville. New England relied as heavily on free agency as any team in recent memory, with 13 of its 25 most-used players on offense and defense acquired as free agents over the previous two offseasons. And the Patriots notably had what was one of the easiest schedules in league history, facing just two teams that posted a winning record all season. The Patriots’ path toward the Super Bowl was off my radar, and they weren’t included in my annual look at teams most likely to improve at this time last year. The other six teams to jump by at least six wins, though, are all featured in one of the two columns you’ll see this week. Today, we start on the rosy side and focus on the teams that are most likely to improve in 2026. And on Tuesday, we’ll talk about the ones that are most likely to decline. Last year’s column featured the Raiders, who declined by a game, and the Giants, who improved by one win. The other three teams were much bigger successes. The Bears rode the Ben Johnson effect and a flood of takeaways on defense to an 11-6 mark after going from 5-11 in 2024. The 49ers jumped from 6-11 to 12-5. And the Jaguars made the biggest leap, going from 4-13 to 13-4 in Liam Coen’s first season at the helm. All three teams made the playoffs after finishing well below .500 the previous season. Since 2017, this annual column has gone 35-8 (.813) in picking teams to improve on the previous season’s record. The average team has gotten 3½ games better after adjusting for the 17-game schedule. And if we include our picks for teams that will decline, the back-to-back columns are a combined 69-17 (.802) in accuracy, while going 50-36 (.581) against the preseason over-under totals preserved on Pro-Football-Reference.com. So, recent history suggests four of the five teams listed in this year’s column should get better. There’s a fun mix of teams that just took a step back in 2025 and long-frustrating organizations that might exceed expectations in 2026. Let’s start with the headliners from last year’s decline column who might be the most obvious pick of the bunch … Kansas City ChiefsRecord in 2025: 6-11 (1-9 in games decided by seven or fewer points)Point differential in 2025: plus-34Projected strength of schedule: 14th easiest You could have suspected things would start here. Twelve months ago, the Chiefs were coming off a 15-2 regular season and led my column on teams most likely to decline in 2025. Andy Reid’s squad had gone 10-0 in games decided by seven points or fewer in 2024, an NFL record. And though anyone who has read this column annually is already familiar with the idea that teams struggle to win a significant proportion of their close games year after year, I wouldn’t have blamed anyone who believed the Chiefs were an outlier. The 10-0 mark took Patrick Mahomes to 43-17 in one-score contests. We’ve seen other generational quarterbacks — with Tom Brady as a notable example — win more of their one-score games than you might expect. It would have been foolish to count on the Chiefs to win every one of their one-score games again, but expecting Mahomes and the Chiefs to fall to even .500 in close games also seemed to be a bad bet. Then, the Chiefs started their 2025 season with a six-point loss to the Chargers. Kansas City lost by three to the Eagles in Week 2. The Jags’ late charge led to a Chiefs loss in Week 5. They were winning big, but when things were close, a team that had always found a way to win the close ones in 2024 found ways to lose them in 2025. The Chiefs went from 10-0 to 1-9 in one-score games between 2024 and 2025, including a 1-7 record with Mahomes under center before the star quarterback tore his left ACL. As you probably guessed, the 18-game swing between 2024 and 2025 is the biggest of one-score victories in league history. The previous record was 13 games by the 2022-23 Vikings, who fell from 9-0 to 4-8 in one-score games. Minnesota then followed with an 8-1 mark in 2024 before regressing to the mean and landing at 4-3 in 2025. The Vikings were cycling through quarterbacks for most of that time, though, and the Chiefs had Mahomes for most of last season. Most of the stars who helped the Chiefs to three consecutive Super Bowl appearances were back in 2025, too. And though the Chiefs were down to third-stringers at QB and left tackle by the end of the season, they were about average in terms of season-long health on offense and even had the league’s healthiest defense, per the FTN Football Almanac’s adjusted games lost metric. Did the Chiefs just play significantly worse? By advanced metrics, the answer to that question is … not really. The 2024 Chiefs finished the regular season eighth in DVOA, pointing to a good team that had remarkable luck in one-score games. And though the 2025 Chiefs understandably faded after Mahomes gave way to Gardner Minshew II and Chris Oladokun at quarterback, they ranked eighth in DVOA through the game against the Chargers in Week 15, when Mahomes suffered his ACL injury. The 2024 Chiefs outscored their opponents by 59 points, or roughly 3.5 points per game. And if we don’t include the post-Mahomes games, the 2025 Chiefs outscored their opponents by 60 points, which is just under 4.3 points per game. Point differential suggests those teams should roughly expect to get about the same number of wins over a full season with an average amount of luck and timing. To put that into context over 17 games, let’s look at teams that outscored their opponents by a margin between three and five points per game in a season. Since 1990, 117 teams have fit into that window. The best record produced by any of those teams is 15-2, which matches the Chiefs’ 2024 record. The Chiefs were 6-8 with Mahomes in the lineup, and that would have been a .428 winning percentage over a full season. That would be the worst winning percentage produced by any of those three-to-five-point-differential teams over a full campaign. In other words, the 2024 Chiefs got the best recorded results out of being a pretty good team since 1990, and the 2025 Chiefs — even with Mahomes — were getting the worst results of any team at that level in recent history before his injury. Even if the Chiefs produce average results with that sort of point differential in 2026, they should be back in the postseason. Are there reasons to be concerned that they won’t match up to that underlying level of play? Maybe. To start, Mahomes is returning from the torn ACL. Though the soon-to-be 31-year-old quarterback is still in contention to start the season on the active roster, it’s difficult to imagine that he won’t feel some sort of disruption or struggle coming back from his first significant injury as a pro. At the very least, Mahomes’ legendary ability to scramble and extend plays might be limited early in 2026. The defense has also lost key players in the secondary, with Trent McDuffie dealt to the Rams, Jaylen Watson joining the Rams in free agency and starting safety Bryan Cook inking a deal with the Bengals. The Chiefs used a top-10 pick on cornerback Mansoor Delane and took shots on L’Jarius Sneed and Kader Kohou in free agency, but it’s tough to imagine that the secondary will be as stout as it was during those runs to the Super Bowl. On the other hand, the Chiefs have made meaningful upgrades elsewhere. Kenneth Walker III should offer a jolt of electricity to a run game that had grown timid and stale over the past couple of seasons, ranking last in explosive play rate. The front four is suddenly much deeper after the Chiefs signed Khyiris Tonga and used their top two picks on Peter Woods and R Mason Thomas. A full season from Josh Simmons, who was impressive at left tackle when available as a rookie, would be a massive upgrade at a spot that has topped out at average and often come up short over the past three years. Amid stiff competition in the AFC West, the Chiefs won’t get the sort of schedule relief that most teams receive by dropping from first to third in their division. The division drew a rough slate of out-of-division opponents in 2026, facing the AFC East and NFC West, ensuring that the Chiefs will get their annual regular-season encounter with the Bills and matchups against the Rams and Seahawks. The Chiefs’ third-place game within the conference drew the Bengals. All four of those games are on the road. Their schedule is roughly league average, per ESPN’s FPI. I don’t think there will be much pushback against the idea that the Chiefs will improve in 2026. How much they improve, though, might be the more meaningful discussion. And unless we see a dramatically different underlying level of play from this team, so much of that might come down to those one-score games and how things pan out in the final minutes of close contests. Winning half of such games would get the Chiefs back into the playoffs. And winning about 65% of the time — which is Mahomes’ new career rate in games decided by seven points or fewer — might push Kansas City back atop the AFC West. Detroit LionsRecord in 2025: 9-8 (2-5 in games decided by seven or fewer points)Point differential in 2025: plus-68Projected strength of schedule: Second easiest Here’s a second powerhouse that was on our list of teams likely to decline and fell further than anybody could have expected last season. The Lions dropped from 7-2 in one-score games in 2024 to 2-5 last season. Their story isn’t quite as clear-cut as that of the Chiefs, but the issues with Dan Campbell’s team in 2025 start there. The losses were often dramatic and painful. The Lions went 0-for-5 on fourth down in a midseason game against the Eagles, turning six trips inside Philly territory into just nine points. What appeared to be a miraculous last-second win against the Steelers was overturned by an offensive pass interference penalty on Amon-Ra St. Brown. And though it wasn’t a one-score game, the Lions failed to recover all five fumbles in a 23-10 loss to the Vikings, turning the ball over six times on a day when winning quarterback Max Brosmer produced 3 net passing yards. Failing to fall on fumbles was a subtle problem for the Lions. They recovered just under 29% of the fumbles on offense and defense last season, which was the worst mark in the league and just the fifth time since 1990 that any team has failed to recover at least 30% of fumbles in a season. If we expand that to a 35% rate to build a larger sample, those teams were snakebit for only a single season. Those same teams recovered 51.7% of fumbles in their games the following year. Their turnover margin improved by 14 takeaways per 17 games. And, as a result, they won an average of 1.9 more contests (again, per 17 games). The Lions should come up with loose footballs more often in 2026. Unlike the Chiefs, the Lions really were ripped to shreds by injuries in 2025. Detroit was last in adjusted games lost on defense, where the only starters who suited up for all 17 games were Derrick Barnes, Jack Campbell, Aidan Hutchinson and DJ Reader. Two of those four full-season starters were first-team All-Pros — which is a pretty good ratio. The offense was healthier, but even there, Detroit was roughly in the middle of the injury pack. The Lions are already facing injury concerns this season. New center Cade Mays, who was brought in to replace the released Graham Glasgow, is out for eight to 10 weeks because of a wrist injury. Power back Isiah Pacheco was going to step in for David Montgomery, but he has been slowed by a knee injury. The situation in the secondary is more ominous. Starting safeties Brian Branch and Kerby Joseph formed the league’s best duo in 2024, but both suffered serious injuries in 2025, with Branch tearing an Achilles and Joseph dealing with a still-murky knee issue. Both are on the physically unable to perform list. And cornerback Terrion Arnold, who was projected to start in 2026, was released after being charged with armed robbery and kidnapping. Without those three starters, the secondary looks to be one of the worst in the NFL. D.J. Reed is a solid starter, but the Lions will be relying on veteran players on team-friendly deals, such as Rock Ya-Sin, Chuck Clark, Christian Izien and Roger McCreary, to compete for meaningful snaps. They’ll be trying to hold up behind a line that will be missing veteran Al-Quadin Muhammad, who racked up 11 sacks and 20 knockdowns in a career season before leaving on a one-year deal to join the Buccaneers. The Lions don’t have the veteran depth they enjoyed in 2023 and 2024, in part because their young stars have commanded more lucrative contracts. In 2023, the Lions still had Hutchinson, St. Brown, Campbell, Penei Sewell, Jameson Williams and Jahmyr Gibbs all on rookie deals. Their six young stars combined to make about $29 million per season on their contracts at that time, allowing general manager Brad Holmes to surround them with veterans, such as Montgomery, Alex Anzalone and Tracy Walker III in supporting roles. Now, those same six players are on contracts that combine to average nearly $173 million per season. Though the Lions can use some restructures to reduce the impact on the salary cap, there’s still a significantly larger cash outlay going to those players. Though they all deserve their big extensions, the Lions don’t have the same resources to surround those players with veteran starters. Montgomery and Anzalone left this offseason, and Muhammad, Taylor Decker, Glasgow and Amik Robertson are also no longer in Detroit. The Lions had to seek free agents who would sign for less. And though Holmes could sacrifice draft capital to supplement the active roster, the Lions desperately need those selections to surround their core with cost-controlled talent in the years to come. Having expensive stars is a good problem, but it’s one that could cap the Lions’ ceiling as they try to get back to the top of the NFC. What should make life easier in 2026, though, is the conference’s easiest schedule. Though the NFC North might be a slugfest, the Lions get four games against the NFC South, and that makes anyone’s life easier. Everyone else in the division gets a game against a playoff team from the NFC West, but the Lions get to face the Cardinals. Detroit still has a handful of games against high-end competition such as the Bills and Packers, but per the FPI’s projection, it gets six games against the eight worst teams in the league. And, of course, the Lions don’t have to do much to contend in the NFC. They still managed a winning record last season. Their margin for error is narrower given the lack of depth on the roster, and the injuries on offense and defense are already concerning, but the Lions should push their way back into the postseason after an unexpected year off. New York GiantsRecord in 2025: 4-13 (1-6 in games decided by seven or fewer points)Point differential in 2025: minus-58Projected strength of schedule: Eighth toughest The Giants did not have Super Bowl aspirations heading into 2025. The goal was a competitive season in what looked to be a make-or-break year for Brian Daboll after the Giants went 3-14 in 2024. There were positive signs from their rookie class, but the Giants improved by only one game — and even that required a two-game winning streak to finish the season. I’d argue that the Giants quietly had a more competitive season, even if Daboll wasn’t around to see the end of it. Yes, New York finished 4-13, but its Pythagorean expectation suggests that Big Blue performed at a 7.1 win rate. Accounting for the 17-game schedule, the Giants are one of only 13 teams since 1990 to finish three-plus wins short of their expected win total by point differential, joining last season’s Chiefs on that list. Even if we expand the sample to include teams with a 2½-win gap, we’re still looking at just 23 teams between 1990 and 2025. Those teams improved by an average of three wins per 17 games the following season. Teams that underperform their point differential typically play up to that level with another shot the following year. Coming up short of the point differential also usually comes with a subpar record in one-score games, and the Giants were 1-6 in those contests a year ago, with their lone victory coming against the Chargers in Week 4. Some games can appear closer than reality, with a late score in garbage time bringing a losing team within one touchdown. But the 2025 Giants suffered some painful losses against winning teams in contests they had a real shot at winning: In Week 2, the Giants’ defense blew a 34-30 lead to the Cowboys with 52 seconds left, only for Russell Wilson to hit Malik Nabers for a 48-yard score to take a 37-34 lead back with 25 seconds to go. The Cowboys picked up 21 yards and set up Brandon Aubrey for a 64-yard field goal to tie the score, then won with four seconds remaining in overtime on another Aubrey kick. Five weeks later, the Giants were up 26-8 on the Broncos with 10:08 left in the fourth quarter, but Bo Nix and Denver stormed back and scored three touchdowns in five minutes. A Jaxson Dart touchdown run gave the Giants a 32-30 lead with 37 seconds to go, but backup kicker Jude McAtamney missed the extra point attempt, and Nix hit 29- and 22-yard completions to set up a winning field goal for the Broncos. In Week 10, the Giants kicked a field goal on fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line to go up 20-10 on the Bears with 10:21 left, turning down a penalty for too many men on the field that would have brought the ball even closer to the goal line. The Bears scored a touchdown to get within one score, and after a 27-yard punt by Jamie Gillan, they took over at midfield and scored another to take a 24-20 lead inside the two-minute warning. The following week, a Jameis Winston plunge put the Giants up 21-20 with 7:22 to go against the Packers. Green Bay scored on the ensuing drive to make it 27-21, and though Winston got the Giants in the red zone on the ensuing possession, an interception with 44 seconds remaining essentially ended the contest. Want another fourth-quarter blown lead? The Giants led the Lions 27-17 with 12:16 to go after Winston threw a touchdown pass to Gunner Olszewski. Jahmyr Gibbs ran for a 49-yard touchdown that pulled the Lions within three, and after the Giants failed to score despite having the ball on second-and-goal at the Detroit 2-yard line, a 59-yard field goal by Jake Bates sent the game to overtime. Gibbs scored from 69 yards on the opening play from scrimmage in OT, and the ensuing Giants drive sputtered out. Finally, Ben Sauls — the team’s fourth kicker of the season — hit a 39-yard field goal to tie the score at 13-13 against the Vikings with 11:06 left. A near-six-minute drive from the Vikings produced a short field goal to take the lead, and Dart’s attempt to answer faded at midfield, allowing Max Brosmer to kneel out the clock. That’s six losses that could have gone the other way against teams with winning records. The Giants held fourth-quarter leads in five of the six — and final-minute leads in three. They lost four games where they held a win probability of at least 90% in the fourth quarter. The rest of the league lost just 15 such games combined. The Giants are just the fourth team to lose four of those games in a season, joining the 2013 Buccaneers, 2009 Steelers and … 2015 Giants, who also got their head coach fired (or forced out), with Tom Coughlin’s tenure ending. That 2016 Giants team promoted Ben McAdoo to head coach, invested heavily in free agents and jumped from 6-10 to 11-5 despite not dramatically improving its underlying level of play; the Giants went from being outscored by 1.4 points per game to outscoring teams by 1.6 points per contest. They followed a 3-8 season in one-score games by going 8-3 in them, and though the improvement (and McAdoo) didn’t stick in the years that followed, that 11-5 season was the best record the Giants have produced since 2008. The Giants hope that John Harbaugh will offer much-needed stability for a franchise that made the longtime Ravens coach its fifth head coaching hire in 10 years after Coughlin’s tenure. The offense is the source of a high ceiling and a low floor. Giants fans are understandably enthused about a core built around Dart, Nabers, running back Cam Skattebo and high-end left tackle Andrew Thomas. The promise of all four on the field at the same time hints at a step forward for an offense that has finished 30th or worse in scoring four times over the past six years. The problem, of course, is counting on them to all be present at the same time. They were on the field for just 60 snaps last season. Skattebo (ankle), Nabers (knee) and Thomas (hamstring) finished the year on injured reserve, while Dart missed time because of a concussion and was repeatedly pulled out of games over concerns about his health. If they’re all healthy and live up to expectations, the Giants could take a massive leap forward on offense, which ranked 22nd in 2025. If not, the Giants might not have the depth to deal with absences, especially after they lost several free agents to Daboll’s new employers in Tennessee. The defense also underwent substantial changes after finishing 26th in DVOA. Dexter Lawrence II, a cornerstone at defensive tackle, was traded to the Bengals for the 10th pick. Free agent disappointment Bobby Okereke was cut and replaced by Tremaine Edmunds, who endured a similar fate with the Bears. Giants general manager Joe Schoen let cornerback Cor’Dale Flott leave in free agency and replaced him with Greg Newsome II, who struggled with the Browns and Jags last season. And the Giants used their No. 5 pick on hybrid Ohio State defender Arvell Reese, giving them yet another potentially impactful edge rusher to play alongside Brian Burns, Abdul Carter and Kayvon Thibodeaux. Stopping the run was the big problem for the Giants in 2025, when they finished last in yards per carry (5.4), and 31st in explosive play rate (10.9%) and success rate (51.7%) against designed runs, coming within a few steps of winning the bad run defense triple crown. Losing Micah McFadden to a Week 1 injury didn’t help, but it’s tough to believe that getting him back will single-handedly fix what’s wrong on the ground for New York, especially with Lawrence now in Cincinnati. The massive tackle wasn’t his usual self last season, when he played through an elbow injury, but the Giants had significant problems stopping the run and tackling at all three levels. Dennard Wilson’s defense will be tested to begin the campaign, as the Giants start their season against the Cowboys and Rams before the schedule briefly softens. Over the full season, the Giants project to face the league’s eighth-toughest schedule by the FPI’s algorithm, which could dampen their chances of making it to the postseason. I believe they have a legitimate shot at surprising the league and becoming a last-place team that jumps into the playoffs in 2026, but so much will depend on whether the offensive standouts stay healthy for much (or all) of the year. New York JetsRecord in 2025: 3-14 (3-5 in games decided by seven or fewer points)Point differential in 2025: minus-203Projected strength of schedule: Sixth easiest Let’s stick around in North Jersey, where the 2025 Jets did something that nobody in NFL history had managed before. Despite hiring former starting cornerback Aaron Glenn as the team’s head coach, the Jets simply could not catch the football on defense. They went all season without even a single interception, the first time that has ever happened. The Jets went 0-for-503. As if that wasn’t enough, the Jets were also unlucky in terms of recovering fumbles, ranking 31st behind the aforementioned Lions by grabbing just 35% of loose balls in their games. On defense, the Jets recovered four of the 14 fumbles they forced. In total, those four turnovers the Jets forced are the fewest for any team since 1934, when the St. Louis Cardinals forced four takeaways all season. Of course, they also played only three games … With the offense struggling, the Jets finished with a turnover margin of minus-19. The Commanders were the only other team to finish with a double-digit negative turnover margin, and they came in at minus-13. The Jets were on a disastrous island. Whether it’s a renewed emphasis on recovering the football, improvements on the personnel side or sheer randomness, history shows that the vast majority of teams in this window improve their turnover margin and their win-loss record the following season. Adjusting for the 17-game season, there have been 34 teams since 1990 to finish with a turnover margin between minus-22 and minus-16 in a given season. The following year, their turnover margin improved by an average of nearly 20 turnovers. Those teams finished with an average turnover margin of plus-1.3. And unsurprisingly, they got much better in the process. They won an average of 2.8 more games the following season. The most recent example would be the 2022 Jaguars, who recovered from the Urban Meyer fiasco in 2021 to go 9-8 and win the division. The Jets winning the AFC East would be a remarkable surprise, and I’m not projecting their season to land there, but it’s worth noting that they’ve made massive roster upgrades this offseason. By the time they lost 42-10 to the Patriots in Week 17, the Jets had already traded star defenders Quinnen Williams and Sauce Gardner for multiple first-round picks. Their quarterback was Brady Cook. His leading receiver on the day was John Metchie III. The secondary was playing multiple rookies for significant snaps. The Jets weren’t tanking, but they weren’t exactly expecting to win, either. They began to use those picks this offseason, with four first- or second-round picks joining the roster. They made significant, much-needed investments on the defensive side of the ball, signing Demario Davis at linebacker, acquiring Minkah Fitzpatrick at safety and replenishing the team’s defensive line. T’Vondre Sweat gave the Jets an underrated nose tackle, while Will McDonald IV is now joined by Joseph Ossai, Kingsley Enagbare and second overall pick David Bailey on the edge. I’m also still (cautiously) holding out hope that Geno Smith — another one of those offseason additions — can hold up his end of the bargain under center. The Raiders were a schematic and personnel mess on offense last season. They saw only glimpses of Brock Bowers while he dealt with injuries all season. Left tackle Kolton Miller, the team’s best lineman, was done by Week 4. Jakobi Meyers was dealt away at midseason. In all, we got one game of Smith with a viable top receiver and a starting-caliber left tackle, and in that game, he went 24-of-34 for 362 yards, a touchdown and an interception (Week 1 win over the Patriots). He never came close to those numbers the rest of the way. And if the surrounding talent was what held Smith back, well, the Jets actually have plenty to work with this season. I placed the Jets 12th in my offensive playmaker rankings, with Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall now supported by a pair of first-round picks in receiver Omar Cooper Jr. and tight end Kenyon Sadiq. Smith has two young, promising tackles in Olu Fashanu and Armand Membou. There’s real help here. (Hall is dealing with a strained groin but is expected back for Week 1.) They need to make a difference in the red zone, though. The Jets scored just 4.2 points per red zone trip in 2025, which was the worst mark in the NFL. Meanwhile, Glenn’s defense allowed 5.5 points when offenses were inside the 20, a figure that was trailed by only the Cowboys. While Dallas could at least call on an explosive offense, the Jets dealt with a minus-1.3 point disparity on trips to the end zone by their offense and defense. As you might guess, that was the worst mark in the league. And as you might already be inferring, it doesn’t tend to stick. Going back to 2001 now because of data limitations, 44 teams have seen their red zone defense trail their red zone offense by at least one point per possession in a given season. The following year? Those teams restored much of that differential, with the gap falling to minus-0.2 points. Their collective records improved by an average of 2.5 wins per 17 games. This was the worst team in the NFL a year ago by advanced metrics, so setting expectations appropriately is important. It would be truly stunning to see the Jets fly up the AFC charts and compete for a playoff berth, let alone land one. They seem more likely to jump up to five or six wins in 2026, but even that would represent significant improvement. Baltimore RavensRecord in 2025: 8-9 (1-4 in games decided by seven or fewer points)Point differential in 2025: plus-26Projected strength of schedule: Fifth easiest We finish up with a Super Bowl contender that saw its season go wrong in the most frustrating fashion. The Ravens started 1-5, hit their bye, won their next five games and made it to Week 18 with a chance to beat the Steelers and win the AFC North. That game saw the teams trade two touchdowns in the fourth quarter, but after Lamar Jackson drove the Ravens into position for a 44-yard field goal, Tyler Loop missed a kick that would have won both the game and the division for Baltimore. John Harbaugh was fired after the game, ending his 18-year tenure with the organization. Let’s run through the biggest reasons the Ravens disappointed in 2025 and put them into context for what might lead them to improve in 2026. Jackson was sidelined by a hamstring injury. After healthy and dominant seasons in 2023 and 2024, the two-time MVP wasn’t the same in 2025. Jackson was off to a great start, posting a 74.8 QBR across his first four starts (fourth in the league), but a hamstring injury sidelined him for a month. While Jackson threw four touchdown passes in a return win over the Dolphins, he didn’t look like his usual self over the next month, throwing one touchdown against four picks in the four ensuing contests. And while things settled down over the final three games of the season, Jackson didn’t do much as a passer in those contests, attempting just 12, 10 and 18 passes, respectively, against the Bengals, Patriots and Steelers. (He missed a game against the Packers with a back contusion in there, too.) We’ve seen Jackson injuries derail the Ravens before, with the future Hall of Famer missing the end of both the 2021 and 2022 campaigns. When Jackson has played, though, he has typically been dominant. In fact, 2025 was the first regular season in which Jackson wasn’t blowing away the competition over any sort of extended stretch of time. It’s reasonable to chalk that up to the aftereffects of the hamstring injury, but it’s at least a little concerning. The Ravens also reduced Jackson’s workload as a runner. Between 2020 and 2024, Jackson averaged 5.5 designed runs per game, a number which doesn’t include scrambles or kneel-downs. In 2025, that dropped to two designed runs per game. It could drop even further in 2026 as the Ravens move Jackson under center more often under new offensive coordinator Declan Doyle, which will limit Baltimore’s ability to run the sort of read concepts that Jackson has excelled in during his career. On the other hand, fewer designed runs might also keep Jackson from getting hit quite as often, which should make it easier for him to play a full season. Jackson is a wizard at getting out of bounds or avoiding big hits at the end of scrambles, but that’s tougher on designed runs between the tackles. That trade-off is probably a plus for the Ravens if Jackson actually completes the entire season on the field. The defense collapsed. Again. For the second year in a row, the Ravens struggled with a disastrous performance on defense before correcting things as the season went along. Through their first five games, the Ravens were dead last in points allowed per drive (3.2) and 30th in EPA allowed per play (plus-0.15). Things got a little bit better against the Rams in Week 6, but improvement really only came after their bye, at which point the Ravens jumped to eighth in both points allowed per possession and EPA allowed per play. Health was an issue early in the season at different positions, but the Ravens didn’t have star defensive tackle Nnamdi Madubuike for the entirety of that post-bye run after the lineman suffered a season-ending neck injury in September. (They finished as the third-most-injured defense in the league by adjusted games lost, although they were also its fourth-healthiest offense.) And some of the shift was extremely variance-driven, as the Ravens were the league’s fourth-worst red zone defense before the bye and its best afterward. The reality, though, is that the Ravens’ pass rush simply wasn’t good enough. After ranking fourth in sack rate and eighth in pressure rate during Mike Macdonald’s final year as defensive coordinator in 2023, the Ravens were 23rd in sack rate and 27th in pressure rate between 2024 and 2025. The organization gave up on Odafe Oweh, trading him to the Chargers for rental safety Alohi Gilman, and it didn’t get much out of rookie second-rounder Mike Green, who had 3.5 sacks on 712 snaps in his debut season. Much of GM Eric DeCosta’s offseason was built around fixing those issues. He famously tried to trade two first-round picks for Maxx Crosby before backing out of the deal and signing edge rusher Trey Hendrickson in free agency. Baltimore also signed ageless wonder Calais Campbell for interior help and threw another second-round pick at the problem in Zion Young. The most important addition might be new coach Jesse Minter, who was Macdonald’s successor as the defensive coordinator at Michigan. Former coordinator Zach Orr never really seemed to have a reliable handle on what was going wrong in Baltimore, and while the Ravens righted the ship by the end of 2024, things were a mess again early in 2025. Minter worked wonders with the Chargers, getting more out of cornerbacks such as Tarheeb Still, Benjamin St-Juste and Donte Jackson than anyone could have expected. He revitalized the career of Derwin James Jr., which bodes well for star Ravens safety Kyle Hamilton, who is already playing at a high level. Minter also coaxed a great half-season out of Oweh, and if the Ravens can similarly manipulate protections and use exotic pressures to create one-on-ones and unblocked rushers, it’ll get the pass rush back on track. I’m optimistic. Bad luck in close games. The Ravens were 1-4 in one-score games, and I just mentioned how the Steelers game came down to a field goal. In Week 1, the Ravens lost to the Bills despite leading 40-25 with the ball and eight minutes to go, owing in part to a crucial Derrick Henry fumble. Another Henry fumble cost the Ravens two weeks later, handing the Lions a short field in the fourth quarter of a game that Baltimore would eventually lose 38-30. Three fourth-quarter trips into the red zone produced only six points in a 27-22 loss to the Steelers. None of these losses represent bad luck, but they’re games the Ravens often found a way to pull out during the Jackson era. (He was 26-20 in one-score games as a starter before 2025.) Life will be easier in 2026. The Ravens project to face the league’s fifth-easiest schedule, as their season begins with five of the first six contests against teams that the FPI expects to post losing records in the Colts, Saints, Titans, Falcons and Browns. Things get much more difficult from that point forward, but if the Ravens do get off to their now-habitual slow start on defense, they should still be able to pull out some victories against overmatched competition. Their ceiling might depend on whether their expensive core of veteran talent — Jackson, Hendrickson, Madubuike, Roquan Smith, Ronnie Stanley, Marlon Humphrey and Zay Flowers — can stay on the field for the vast majority of the campaign. As long as everyone is available for most of the year, the Ravens should be back on track to compete at the top of the AFC in 2026. We don’t dispute any of Barnwell’s 5 picks – all but the Jets seem obvious. But we are surprised that the Bengals who won 6 games in 2025 did not make it. And we think the Raiders, who won 3 times in 2025, are, like the Jets, a bad team that will be less bad this season. This from The Athletic’s Paul Dehner says the gambling line is over 10 wins for Cincinnati: Cincinnati BengalsProjected wins: 10.3Verdict: Too low The Bengals are currently favored in 15 of 17 games. In the last 16 games Joe Burrow started as a favorite, the Bengals are 13-3. Their defense looks dramatically more reliable with quality veterans now plastered across the roster. The hedge here is on Burrow’s health and that’s always a notable variable. They also paid $6 million to Joe Flacco to mitigate it. It’s hard to imagine a full season of Burrow complemented by a steady defense falling below 11 wins. — Paul Dehner Jr. |
