You can say the NFL has experienced the end of an era with the 2025 season. Let’s consider 2018-25 its own era where Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs carved out a dynasty to replace the Patriots by keeping the Buffalo Bills and Baltimore Ravens at bay for years and denying Kyle Shanahan’s talented 49ers two rings in head-to-head Super Bowls.
But all eras come to an end, and after the Chiefs missed the playoffs in 2025 and Mahomes tore his ACL, the AFC was considered to be wide open. Yet, the Ravens still missed the playoffs, the Steelers lost another wild card game badly, and the Bills still couldn’t get to a Super Bowl with Josh Allen. We were stuck watching the Patriots outlast the Jarrett Stidham-led Broncos in the AFC Championship Game that was bad even before a speck of snow hit the ground.
Because those teams still failed to advance without the Chiefs in sight, John Harbaugh, Mike Tomlin, and Sean McDermott are all gone from their long-tenured jobs, and we’ll have 10 new head coaches in 2026. We’ll also reportedly have 21 new offensive coordinators, so get used to reading about those changes this summer in team previews.
Alas, Super Bowl 60 was the NFC’s to lose, and that’s why the NFC Championship Game between the Rams and Seahawks, the two best teams in the league, was the real Super Bowl.
On Sunday night, the Seattle Seahawks used a familiar script where the No. 1 scoring defense batters the team with protection problems in an easy win that won’t go down as a memorable Super Bowl. At least not on the surface.
Things can change if this is the start of a run for the Seahawks, a common belief for most teams that win the Super Bowl. But NFL history has shown us that it is harder than ever to repeat, and with 2025 being such an outlier, this might be one of the toughest seasons to take any long-lasting lessons from. A lot of fool’s gold out there.
So, let’s recap some of the lessons learned from the 2025 NFL season, how we should start applying them for the next era in 2026, and we’ll take our first look at the odds to win Super Bowl 61 at SoFi Stadium.
Table of Contents
Recap of the 2025 NFL Season
I think people love the concept of parity and new contenders far more than actually watching new contenders. Or maybe they just hated the Chiefs and now regret asking for something new.
In the fallout of Super Bowl 60 between two teams who had zero fourth-quarter lead changes in any of their playoff games while the rest of the NFL produced a record 14 lead changes, the immediate reviews on the 2025 NFL season were not positive unless you’re a fan of the Seahawks:
It was certainly a wild and historic season in some ways, but was it too much change at the top?
- A record seven new teams won their division, none were favored to do so, and the only repeat winner (Eagles in NFC East) was the only division that hadn’t had any repeat winners since 2004, a record drought you’ll likely never see matched.
- Of the top seven preseason Super Bowl favorites, only the Bills won a playoff game, and the Ravens, Chiefs, Lions, and Commanders didn’t even make the playoffs.
- No wonder the Seahawks (+6000) and Patriots (+8000) combined for the most improbable preseason odds of any Super Bowl matchup in NFL history. No wonder it was also the first Super Bowl matchup where both teams lost in Week 1, and the Patriots lost to the Raiders, the 3-14 team who earned the No. 1 pick.
- The 2025 AFC had five teams win at least 12 games, the first time that’s ever happened in one conference since the 1970 merger.
- The 2025 NFC West became the first division to ever have three teams win at least 12 games, and that happened largely at the expense of the 3-14 Arizona Cardinals, who were 0-6 against them.
Remember when the Indianapolis Colts were 7-1 with a historic offense led by Daniel “Indiana” Jones? That was a strange half-season. Then after his injuries sunk the season, the Colts’ last bit of relevancy was nearly pulling off a 14-point underdog upset on the road in Seattle with Philip Rivers just five days after he ended his retirement on his 44th birthday. He even led a go-ahead drive in the final minute before the Seahawks came back to win.
And that Seattle team still won the Super Bowl with a dominant point differential despite Sam Darnold having the lowest yards per attempt (5.3) for a winning quarterback in Super Bowl history. Or how they needed a nonchalant recovery of a deflected pass on a 2-point conversion to tie the Game of the Year with the Rams in Week 16, then got a ridiculous fumbled punt by the Rams in the third quarter of the NFC Championship Game, the real Super Bowl.
That’s your dominant champion, and don’t even get me started on the schedule merchants from New England they beat on Sunday night. That’s 2025 in a nutshell.
It’s not that this season didn’t give us some great prime-time matchups and finishes. Buffalo’s crazy comeback against Baltimore on opening night, New England’s 11-point comeback against Baltimore in December, and Pittsburgh’s late comeback against Baltimore to end the season. Okay, no wonder John Harbaugh got fired. That’s three blown leads on Sunday Night Football alone.
But maybe with more island games than ever before in a season, it got to be too much at times, and the quarterback injuries certainly didn’t help when you’re watching the Bengals getting killed in Denver with Jake Browning, or sitting through a Christmas game the Vikings won where Max Brosmer had 3 net passing yards against Detroit.
Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, Jayden Daniels, and Patrick Mahomes were all preseason MVP favorites who were injured at some point in the season, and none of their teams had a winning record.
That’s why the MVP race became a two-way battle of attrition (with a tip of the cap to Justin Herbert) between Matthew Stafford and Drake Maye. The rookie award races were “mid” at best. Micah Parsons’ torn ACL cleared the path to a Defensive Player of the Year award for Myles Garrett, who just barely broke the single-season sack record for a 5-win Cleveland team that somehow sent two quarterbacks (Shedeur Sanders, Joe Flacco) to the absolute sham that is the Pro Bowl these days.
A lot of the award races were close because no one really knew how to make sense of this season. That’s going to lead to some tricky predictions in 2026.
Lessons Learned from the 2025 NFL Season
For a 2025 season that feels like such an outlier in NFL history, it’s best not to make sweeping generalizations about how to do business going forward. But two lessons reinforced harshly in Super Bowl 60 is that you better have an offensive line without a major hole, and you better be able to rush the passer without blitzing.
Once again, that proved to be the difference in who won and lost a championship in the NFL:
- Patriots rookie left tackle Will Campbell reportedly allowed 14 pressures in Super Bowl 60, the most by any one player in any game this season.
- The Patriots gave up 6 sacks to go along with the 15 sacks in the first three playoff games, the 21 sacks the most ever allowed in a single postseason (2021 Bengals had 19 and also lost the Super Bowl).
- According to NFL Pro, Sam Darnold and Drake Maye both had an average time to throw of 2.83 seconds in Super Bowl 60.
- But Maye was pressured on 52.8% of his dropbacks (his second-highest game of 2025) while only facing a blitz on a season-low 13.2% of his plays.
- Darnold was pressured on 41.5% of his dropbacks while facing a blitz on 56.1% of his plays, meaning there were fewer players left in the secondary to defend receivers.
- Darnold took one sack and avoided several more with more room to throw the ball.
It’s nearly impossible to win a game in the NFL if your pressure rate is practically 40 percentage points higher than the blitz rate. Even Patrick Mahomes was at +38.1% (2024 Eagles) and +32.4% (2020 Buccaneers) in his blowout Super Bowl losses while Maye was +39.6% on Sunday night.
The Patriots were playing with fire every week in the playoffs with their pass protection and the sacks and fumbles Maye was accumulating. It just took a very good Seattle team that had a healthy offense to not screw things up against New England’s defense, which played well, and a Seattle defense that was on the ball about how to attack the offensive line of the Patriots with corner blitzes from Devon Witherspoon that they didn’t show on tape that much in 2025 and not once in the playoffs until it was Super Bowl time:
It’s a credit to Mike Macdonald’s defense, but again, it’s not like the Patriots weren’t showing weaknesses in protection for much of this season. It’s just they got to face a schedule that rarely could exploit it until they got to the playoffs. Then the Seahawks didn’t help them out with any turnovers. Had Jarrett Stidham not given up that bad fumble on a backwards pass attempt at a throwaway, the Patriots might have scored a single field goal in the AFC Championship Game. Instead, they got a 12-yard touchdown drive.
But in the case of Seattle, it is good drafting that helped them get to this point too. Look at some of their best picks since the 2022 draft:
- 2022, 1.9 LT Charles Cross
- 2022, 2.40 DE Boye Mafe
- 2022, 2.41 RB Kenneth Walker
- 2022, 3.72 RT Abraham Lucas
- 2022, 4.109 CB Coby Bryant
- 2022, 5.153 CB Riq Woolen
- 2023, 1.5 CB Devon Witherspoon
- 2023, 1.20 WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba
- 2023, 2.37 DE Derick Hall
- 2023, 4.108 RG Anthony Bradford
- 2024, 1.16 DT Byron Murphy
- 2024, 4.121 TE A.J. Barner
- 2025, 1.18 LG Grey Zabel
- 2025, 2.35 SAF Nick Emmanwori
That’s just 80% of your starting offensive line, your Super Bowl MVP running back, your Offensive Player of the Year WR1, your starting tight end, multiple defensive line starters, and your leaders in the secondary and key depth.
A Super Bowl core largely built in the draft by one of the top general managers (John Schneider), then they rounded it out with Cooper Kupp as a competent No. 2, traded for Rashid Shaheed during the season to shore up the special teams, and gambled (and won) that a young Sam Darnold was going to be an upgrade over Geno Smith.
Throw in a couple of defensive veterans they picked up this year (DeMarcus Lawrence) or in the past (Leonard Williams, Uchenna Nwosu, Julian Love, Ernest Jones), and this team was built almost entirely in the last four seasons for this moment where they could strike in a down year for the league as long as Darnold was sharp and Macdonald’s scheme could maximize the talent he had.
Players like Emmanwori and Witherspoon give him the versatility he needs to make his defense work, then the work JSN put it to get much better as a true No. 1 after the team said adios to D.K Metcalf and Tyler Lockett proved to be huge for Darnold, who proved his 2024 season in Minnesota was not a one-year fluke.
Everything came together rather quickly here, and with the Patriots also going from a 4-13 season to the Super Bowl, it does serve as a reminder that no team should be waiting on some 5-year plan to improve. You really can do it much quicker in the NFL with the right pieces, but it still starts with making sure you have the right coach, quarterback, and a support system around them that’s going to largely come from the draft and from smart free-agent signings instead of very expensive ones.
With two of the more dominant Super Bowl winners led by Darnold and Jalen Hurts the last two years, it does go to show that you don’t need the most expensive quarterback in the NFL to win it all. Granted, Hurts was paid well and Darnold could be soon joining the near $60 million per year club, but maybe this will make teams reconsider giving that kind of money to their quarterback for his next contract with decisions soon to come on players like C.J. Stroud (Texans) and Bryce Young (Panthers).
Why would I pay Stroud $60M to screw my team’s season up with his turnovers like he did this January when he just needed to manage the game like Darnold did in most of the big games this year?
Likewise, why am I spending a ton of money on two wide receivers (a la Bengals) if we can get by with one stud and one reliable player like the Seahawks just did? That’s where the value of a good offensive coordinator comes into play, and it’s no surprise the Raiders snatched up Klint Kubiak from the Seahawks right after this game ended. He’ll try to create some magic in Vegas with Brock Bowers, Ashton Jeanty, and maybe Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza with that No. 1 pick in the 2026 draft.
Coaching, defense, offensive line play, and good drafting. These aren’t new lessons. Just a reminder of what actually wins championships in this league.
Storylines to Watch for in 2026 NFL Season
The No. 1 storyline for the 2026 NFL season is what does the new norm look like? We called 2025 the end of an era with all these coaching changes, but what proves to be real from this season, and what was a flash in the pan never to be repeated again? For how many of the following teams was 2025 as good as it gets?
- Seahawks: Harder to repeat defensive success like that and almost surely would face a tougher Super Bowl opponent next year.
- Patriots: What happens to the schedule merchants when they have to play the AFC West and NFC North in 2026 after going 9-1 in holding onto one-score leads in the fourth quarter against one of the easiest schedules in NFL history?
- Broncos: It took eight game-winning drives for a No. 1 seed and playoff win for Denver, so how does that hold up next season in what should be a tougher division race?
- Jaguars: Did Liam Coen miss his window, or can he get even more out of Trevor Lawrence for a full season?
- Bears: Take your pick with regression at turnovers (league-best +22 differential) or close games after a record seven wins after trailing in the final 2:00.
- Texans: Can that defense stay that strong and can Stroud play better, or was 2023 a mirage?
- Panthers: No one had a winning record in the NFC South, but can Carolina hold off the other three to repeat in the league’s worst division?
You just know some of these teams have already peaked. It will be fun to see which ones haven’t. I just refuse to believe the Broncos and Patriots are about to keep winning the East and West instead of the Chiefs and Bills. Mahomes and Allen are far from finished, and we need to get back to seeing great quarterback play in the AFC playoffs.
Other storylines we’ll be following in 2026:
- Will Buffalo regret promoting Joe Brady to head coach instead of hiring their choice of coaches to give the team a fresh perspective as Josh Allen enters his age-30 season, and can the Bills take back the AFC East from New England?
- After Denver reached the AFC Championship Game two years after eating a record amount of dead cap money on Russell Wilson, will teams like Arizona (Kyler Murray) and Miami (Tua Tagovailoa) make similar moves in fresh starts for their new head coaches?
- Can the Jets ever get an interception under Aaron Glenn after going 17 games without one in 2025?
- Will the Steelers keep their non-losing season streak alive without Mike Tomlin as Mike McCarthy hopes to court Aaron Rodgers back for one more year at age 43? Will they give him some young wide receivers to throw to?
- Do the Ravens get back on track under Jesse Minter, who might have even more pressure to succeed after what ex-assistant Mike Macdonald has achieved in two years with Seattle?
- What will it take to get Zac Taylor fired in Cincinnati? Seriously.
- With Fernando Mendoza a favorite to go No. 1 to the Raiders and Klint Kubiak in a draft that won’t have Arch Manning (Texas), what other quarterback-needy teams like the Jets, Browns, and Cardinals force a high quarterback pick in an underwhelming draft class for the position?
- The Chiefs may never pick this high (No. 9) again with Patrick Mahomes coming off ACL surgery, so where do they go in the draft? A running back like Jeremiyah Love (Notre Dame), an edge rusher like Keldrick Faulk (Auburn), or a wide receiver who can run routes like Carnell Tate (Ohio State)?
- With Robert Saleh and Brian Daboll escaping the Curse of MetLife Stadium for Tennessee, can they get a second-year breakout season out of Cam Ward against an easier schedule? Maybe a worst-to-first situation brewing?
- In the NFC South, can Kellen Moore get a big year out of Tyler Shough to win that cursed division for the Saints for the first time since 2020?
- Justin Herbert didn’t have more than one good receiver in 2024, he didn’t have any good offensive tackles in 2025, so could 2026 with Mike McDaniel calling the offense actually be his best year yet if everyone stays healthy?
- The Giants have concepts of a plan for competing in 2026, but we’ll see if Jaxson Dart can stay healthy for John Harbaugh, who has to help a team that couldn’t stop blowing double-digit leads in the second half (much like his Ravens).
- Will the Cowboys and Commanders continue ignoring the defenses they’ve put around Dak Prescott and Jayden Daniels, and will the Eagles run out of excuses if their offense is still problematic under a new coordinator?
- Do the Vikings give up on J.J. McCarthy this season? Watching Sam Darnold win the Super Bowl has to hurt more than Justin Jefferson’s feelings.
- Will Dan Campbell and Jared Goff be the next duo to uphold the Five-Year Rule? Their Super Bowl window might already be shut in Detroit after five seasons together.
- Can Matt LaFleur’s stars ever stay healthy in Green Bay after losing Tucker Kraft and Micah Parsons to torn ACLs and blowing a 21-3 lead in Chicago? Can he actually finish higher than the No. 7 seed with Jordan Love as his quarterback?
- If they’re on the move, where do the top free agents land, including Trey Hendrickson, George Pickens, Breece Hall, Malik Willis, Alec Pierce, Kyle Pitts, and Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker?
- Are any disgruntled stars like Jefferson, A.J. Brown, and Maxx Crosby about to be on the trade block?
- Will the 49ers ever stay healthy for Kyle Shanahan?
- The Rams have been the closest to knocking off the 2024 Eagles and 2025 Seahawks in the playoffs, so where do they strengthen their roster to get over the hump with a 38-year-old Matthew Stafford coming off his first MVP season as the team eyes a second home Super Bowl in six years?
Early Super Bowl 61 Odds
Here are the opening Super Bowl 61 odds from FanDuel to win the championship next February at SoFi Stadium.
- Seattle Seahawks (+750)
- Los Angeles Rams (+800)
- Baltimore Ravens (+1200)
- Buffalo Bills (+1200)
- Green Bay Packers (+1300)
- Los Angeles Chargers (+1500)
- Philadelphia Eagles (+1500)
- Detroit Lions (+1600)
- Kansas City Chiefs (+1600)
- New England Patriots (+1700)
- San Francisco 49ers (+1800)
- Denver Broncos (+2000)
- Jacksonville Jaguars (+2000)
- Houston Texans (+2000)
- Chicago Bears (+2700)
- Cincinnati Bengals (+3000)
- Dallas Cowboys (+3000)
- Indianapolis Colts (+4000)
- Washington Commanders (+4500)
- Atlanta Falcons (+5000)
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers (+5000)
- Minnesota Vikings (+5500)
- New York Giants (+7500)
- Pittsburgh Steelers (+10000)
- Cleveland Browns (+12500)
- Las Vegas Raiders (+12500)
- Tennessee Titans (+15000)
- Carolina Panthers (+15000)
- New Orleans Saints (+17500)
- Arizona Cardinals (+22500)
- Miami Dolphins (+22500)
- New York Jets (+25000)
The Seahawks are slight favorites to repeat with +750 odds, but my initial thought is the 2026 season is very likely to be a lot of regression to the mean that is going to correct some of these whacky results we just watched unfold, so you’ll see two new teams in the Super Bowl.
It also makes intuitive sense with the Seahawks and Patriots both facing a serious contender in their own division in the Rams and Bills, which always makes it harder to win the Super Bowl if you have to take the road route through the postseason. Seattle had a great year, but losing Kubiak will hurt, and it just doesn’t feel like the kind of season you can repeat with that much scoreboard dominance in what was a down year for the product. The Rams getting 5% better on special teams could literally make the difference in who wins the NFC West, and I obviously don’t trust the Patriots to repeat their success.
But you’re not going to make strong predictions for 52 weeks away before we’ve had the free agency, trades, and draft to figure things out. If I was going to pick out a dark horse, I’d say the Giants (+7500) with the combination of a Super Bowl-winning coach getting a fresh start with a talented second-year quarterback could be one way to go in an NFC that likes giving us new Super Bowl teams that still have some track record in the game (Giants were in the Super Bowl in 2000, 2007, and 2011). And hey, maybe Darnold’s win lifted the curse on MetLife Stadium.
The Chiefs (+1600) aren’t guaranteed to have Patrick Mahomes in Week 1, so that’s always iffy, but their schedule will hopefully be easier to start this year. That’s always a team to value in the AFC. In fact, it’s surprising the Chargers open as favorites in the AFC West with Denver getting that No. 1 seed and the Chiefs likely coming back stronger. That feels like a hard team to trust in January given what we saw out of Justin Herbert in New England.
Still like the Packers, but the Rams make sense too and getting to play another Super Bowl at SoFi sounds like the kind of ridiculous NFL script that Roger Goodell would sign off on.
But it’s a long path to get there, and we’ll hopefully see some new norms that are more pleasing to watch than what we just had in this 2025 NFL season.
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