One of the most fun exercises in every NFL preseason is to analyze the NFL season win totals and figure out which teams are going over and under. We’ve projected all 32 teams with our DVOA stats in the new book FTN Football Almanac 2025 and simulated the season 50,000 times. Our projections account not just for performance over the last three years in specific situations but also for personnel and coaching changes this offseason.

Let’s look below at three teams that have the best chance to go under their Vegas win totals.

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Philadelphia Eagles under 11.5

This one is rather counterintuitive. Aren’t the Eagles the best team in football? They’re the defending Super Bowl champions! Well, the team that wins the championship wasn’t necessarily the best team during the regular season, and they aren’t necessarily the best team the following season.

What’s most important here is that offense is more predictable and consistent than defense. Last year’s Eagles offense was good but not great in the regular season. The defense, on the other hand, was fantastic. It’s very unlikely that the Eagles will be the best defense in the league again by a large margin. This is especially true given the veteran talent that left in free agency. With players such as Josh Sweat, Milton Williams and Darius Slay Jr. now elsewhere, the Eagles lost more defensive talent than any other team this offseason.

Our projections expect the Eagles offense to be a little bit better this year. But the likely decline of the defense combined with the second-toughest projected schedule in the NFL makes it likely that the Eagles will go under this very high number. The Eagles could easily be a playoff team at 10-7 or 11-6 and the under will still hit.

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Houston Texans under 9.5

Some of what I wrote about Philadelphia also applies to Houston. The Texans defense will have a hard time playing as well in 2025 as it did in 2024, when it ranked third in the league by DVOA. The Texans were superlative in run defense last year, but pass defense tends to be more predictive of the following season than run defense. Meanwhile, we aren’t expecting too much improvement from the offense because there are still so many questions about the Houston offensive line: Who will start, and how the Texans will overcome the decision to trade their best lineman, Laremy Tunsil, to the Commanders.

Add on a first-place schedule that includes the Ravens, Bills and Buccaneers, and I think there’s a good chance the Texans are going 9-8 or worse in 2025.

Los Angeles Chargers under 9.5

Much of our subpar projection for the Chargers is driven by the idea that the defense is going to regress after leading the league in fewest points allowed in 2024. Some of that is because of talent lost, in particular defensive linemen Joey Bosa and Poona Ford. Some of it is because of the Plexiglass Principle, the idea that units that dramatically improve from one year to the next will tend to take a step back in the third year. It’s certainly possible that Jesse Minter is a good enough coordinator that the Chargers won’t have this problem. But then, what about their offense?

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Justin Herbert is generally lauded as one of the top quarterbacks in the game, but the Chargers offense is in real trouble with the season-ending injury to left tackle Rashawn Slater. Joe Alt will move to the left side, but that creates problems at right tackle as well as on the interior. There are also questions about the receiving corps other than Ladd McConkey, as the Chargers are depending on a rookie Tre’ Harris or a 33-year-old Keenan Allen. Overall, there are enough questions in Los Angeles to suspect the Chargers will have a tough time matching last year’s 11-6 record.