Trying to predict the outcome of the NFL season in May is madness — teams haven’t even held their first formal practices of the new campaign, after all. It’s much safer, though, to forecast that the division champions won’t look the same as they did last season.
At least one team has won its division the season after missing the playoffs entirely in 53 of the 55 seasons since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. Only 2024 and 1976 had division winners that were all in the postseason the prior campaign. Parity is usually such a powerful force in the NFL that at least one team has gone from worst to first — winning the division the season after finishing last or tied for last — in 20 of the last 23 years. No team did it in 2024, and that was the first time since 2019.
Last season, we had two new division winners. The eventual Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles unseated the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC East, while the Los Angeles Rams won the NFC West, taking the crown from the San Francisco 49ers, who plummeted all the way to the bottom of the division. Parity took the 2024 season off in the AFC — all four division champions were repeats.
It’s time for us to take a look at who might be vulnerable this season. I’m not officially predicting that the higher-ranked teams below will lose their divisions, but I am forecasting that the landscape might have changed just enough — for them and their division opponents — that their future could be a little murky. This is not to say that those squads that fail to repeat as division champions inherently will fail to make the postseason altogether. With three wild-card spots in each conference, there is room for error.
Based on offseason roster activity, though, this is an ordering, 1-8, of the teams whose grasp on the division title might be loosened in 2025. Without further ado, the most vulnerable reigning division champ is …