The 100% True and Accurate Prediction of the 2026 NFL Season

Tonight, the 2026 NFL season kicks off with a Super Bowl rematch, Patriots v. Seahawks. The long, miserable offseason is over, and football is finally here once more. Huz-freaking-zah.

I’ll be watching, as I always do, with the DVOA Discord up on the monitor, chattering away. If you’ve never dropped in, I invite you to come along! It’s a great community of people who watch the game through the same kind of lens as the ex-Football Outsiders crew; Mike Tanier and Tom Gower often pop in; it’s a lot of fun – especially late in a blowout. The number of Thursday Night games that have been made watchable by our usual gang of idiots are immeasurable, and I highly recommend it as a *second-screen experience*, if you excuse the corporate nonsense speak for just a moment.

But the excitement is muted, at least for me. Part of the fun of a new season is the endless possibilities; finding out which teams will be good and which need to start looking ahead towards the 2027 draft. But not for me. You see, I already know what’s going to happen.

Throughout the offseason, with the FTN Almanac and the Over/Under series I did over there, I’ve been previewing the upcoming season in terms of what’s likely to happen or what the odds say – computer models and win probabilities and potential outcomes and all that good stuff. Well, that’s a lot of busy work. Clearly, it’s a lot easier just to look into the future and know what’s going to happen, right?

Well, fortunately, the results of the 2026 season came to me in a dream of a vision – or was that the vision of a dream? It can be hard to keep it straight when uncountable ergs of future knowledge have been beamed directly into your skull. No matter. I know how the 2026 season will unfold, and now I can share it all with you before the season begins. All of these predictions are guaranteed to be 100% true – and if your find reality disagrees with them, it is in fact reality that is mistaken, not me.

Spoilers, of course.

NFC West

Los Angeles Rams: 13-4
Seattle Seahawks: 13-4
San Francisco 49ers: 11-6
Arizona Cardinals: 3-14

The NFL gest what it wishes, with the Week 18 games between the Rams and the Seahawks in SoFi Stadium being for all the marbles – not just the NFC West title, but the top seed in the conference and the bye during the wildcard week.

Neither the Rams nor the Seahawks are quite the unstoppable dynamo some predict, however. The Rams, in particular, set a new record for hand-wringing October thinkpieces as they start the year 2-2, with back-to-back road losses in Denver and Philadelphia having pundits aplenty thinking we overrated them this offseason. How could we put all our faith in Matthew Stafford’s aging back, a team with no third wideout, a team with no middle linebackers or tight ends? That talk quiets down as the Rams rattle off an eight-game win streak over the middle of the year, but they’re looking up in the standings at Seattle for the bulk of the season. And when they lose to San Francisco and Seattle in a span of three weeks, their status as paper tigers seem all but convinced.

Not that Seattle is unimpeachable, either. Their defense isn’t quite as good as last season, but it’s more than good enough to keep them in the #1 slot for most of the year. They hit their bye week at 9-1, and the repeat looks on. But in the second half, they come a little back down to Earth, losing road games to contending San Francisco and Philadelphia teams. Both the Seahawks and Rams enter the final week of the season 12-4, but the Rams’ defense sacks Sam Darnold five times in the Week 18 finale, avenging their Week 16 loss and handing the division title to Los Angeles. The Seahawks still get the fifth seed, though, and everyone knows that we’re just waiting for the rubber match in the playoffs.

The 49ers have a healthy season by their standards, meaning that their star players only miss a game or two each rather than the bulk of the season. They never get into first place in the division, though they do make a late run out of it, beating both Los Angeles and Seattle at Levi’s over the back half of the season. In fact, through Week 14, the 9-4 49ers are within spitting distance of the 11-2 Seahawks and 10-3 Rams; it’s a real three-way race rather than just the two giants dwarfing everyone else. San Francisco fades down the stretch, however, losing back-to-back road games against the Chargers and Chiefs. They finish 11-5 and earn the sixth seed as credible wildcard opponents, if not among the upper tier of Super Bowl contenders.

All offseason, I’ve been saying the Arizona Cardinals are more talented than you think. To show what I know, they go out and start the season 0-11, with first Jacoby Brissett and then Gardner Minshew unable to do jack and/or shit under center. After a 34-6 loss to Kansas City in November, they finally make the move to Carson Beck and…it pays dividends? Minor dividends, mind you, but Arizona alternates wins and losses the rest of the way, finishing on a 3-3 run that at least promises a small beacon of hope for next season.

NFC North

Detroit Lions: 13-4
Green Bay Packers: 11-6
Chicago Bears: 10-7
Minnesota Vikings: 9-8

It’s not quite a runaway at the top of the NFC, however. The Detroit Lions also have a chance at claiming the NFC’s top seed in Week 18, as they rebound quite nicely from the 2025 doldrums to be top contenders once again. After an early season loss to Buffalo as they open their new stadium, Detroit rattles off 11 straight wins, and are sitting in the #1 seed position from Week 12 through Week 16 – for a while, it looks like the NFC playoffs are going to go through Ford Field. The defense looks strong, especially when both Brian Branch and Kerby Joseph come off of the PUP list at the earliest opportunity. The offense? Jared Goff leads the league in passing yardage, to the surprise of some. But once the holidays come, things start to get sour. Brian Flores unleashes a torrent of pass rushers, upsetting Detroit on Sunday Night Football. The Bears win a shootout two weeks later at Soldier Field. And, with the bye week on the line in Week 18 in Lambeau? Well…

Green Bay spends most of the year flittering back and forth between the seventh and eight seeds, as they just can’t seem to get any regular momentum going. Throughout the first half of the season, they never win more than two games in a row, and after getting throttled by the Rams in Week 12, they sit at 6-5, with whispers about Matt LaFleur’s job security. The schedule does get a bit easier from there, but the Packers don’t just take advantage of some checked-out squads down the stretch. They beat Buffalo in Lambeau, they take down Houston. And, with the season on the line, they complete their late season run by beating the Lions on Saturday night in Week 18, wrapping up a 5-1 run down the stretch and once again winning the seventh seed in the NFC, like is apparently their birthright. The Lions still end up with the #2 seed – and thus, an immediate rematch with the Packers in the Wild Card round– but now they look weak and vulnerable, and the pundits say they’re not going anywhere.

Caleb Williams becomes the first Bear to crack the 4,000-yard barrier. In fact, he shatters it, throwing for 4,645 yards and firmly planting Chicago into the era of modern football. Chicago doesn’t quite meet Ben Johnson’s goal of becoming the best scoring offense of all time, but they score 28.8 points per game and shattering the Bears’ single-season scoring record. Unfortunately, Williams is still out-gained by the juggernaut that is “Whoever is Playing the Bears This Week”, who throws for over 4,800 yards as Chicago sets the new all-time record for most passing yards allowed in a season. The Bears still win more games than they lose, but they run out of steam down the stretch, losing three of their last five games (including an embarrassing loss to Miami, of all teams). 10-7 isn’t anything to sneeze at, but they’re left out of the playoffs and have to keep searching for the pass rusher they didn’t add this year.

The Vikings are never really in contention, despite their winning record. They salvage a winning record in the back half of the season by beating up on the NFC South, going 5-2 down the stretch to salvage an over .500 season. Their biggest highlights are playing spoiler – being the first team to deliver a bodyshot to the riding high Lions; knocking off the Bears in Week 18 to keep them out of the playoffs. But the offense is middling, at best, as Kyler Murray is not the solution to all problems. Minnesota remains stuck in purgatory for now.

NFC East

Philadelphia Eagles: 13-4
Dallas Cowboys: 9-8
New York Giants: 8-9
Washington Commanders: 5-12

It’s a miracle – a drama-free Eagles season. Everyone gets along. No wide receivers snipe at quarterbacks; no one burns the offensive coordinator in effigy. Things are quiet – almost too quiet. They never quite feel like top contenders – a Week 3 loss to Chicago kind of nips that in the bud, and they slip up on the road in the division enough that there’s enough fodder to keep WIP radio callers happy. But they do squeak past the Rams, the Seahawks, the Texans – they’re never the most convincing wins in the world, but they do happen. The offense seems to take a step forward, with Jalen Hurts having some success adapting to actually using the middle of the field for once. They clinch the division in Week 16 and, after losing to the 49ers the next week, decide to rest their starters for the Week 18 game against the Giants – which Tanner McKee wins anyway. They were already locked into the third seed going in, so it’s just gravy, but not a bad way to end the regular season.

The Greatest Offense There Is…isn’t. The Dallas offense is thoroughly mundane and uninspired, and George Pickens starts grumbling about not getting targeted enough starting in October, leading to drama the rest of the way and setting up a showdown this offseason over his next deal – business as usual, in other words. Jerry Jones hints about making a trade for an impact defender, but a mid-season acquisition of Arik Armstead ends up not really moving the needle that much; the defense isn’t historically bad like it was in 2025, but it’s not great, either. The Cowboys are up and down all year, and end up utterly disappointed with a nine-win season.

The Giants, meanwhile, are thrilled with an eight-win season, their best year since 2022. John Harbaugh does not immediately cure all that ails New York, but sheer competency helps – as does a killer pass rush and a developing, if not quite there, offense. A 3-1 start, including an upset win over the Cowboys in Week 1, sparks some speculation if this is the year they return to the playoffs, but that never really gels together; they never win more than two games in a row all year long. But Jaxson Dart continues to develop, at least until he misses the last three games of the season due to injury. Dropping back-to-back-to-back games to the Lions, Cowboys and Eagles to end the year prevent this from being a winning season, but optimism still reigns. Maybe 2027 is the year they’ll get back over .500.

Optimism does not reign in Washington, as the Commanders get out to an 0-4 start. Things don’t get better from there, with Washington never winning back-to-back games all season long. A December blowout loss to the Titans ends up being the final straw for Dan Quinn, who is sent packing. Whether or not this spells the end of the Jayden Daniels era is up in the air; Daniels certainly looked better than he did in 2025 but wasn’t up to his rookie season’s level of performance. The Commanders have the eighth pick in the draft, so they don’t have the top choice of quarterback, but someone may fall to them – or at least be in range of a slight move up. That conversation drowns out the entire Washington offseason, as new head coach Matt Burke has a decision to make.

NFC South

Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 10-7
Carolina Panthers: 6-11
New Orleans Saints: 6-11
Atlanta Falcons: 2-15

These records make this look like the least dramatic division in the NFL by far, and it’s not up there with some of the others, no doubt. But the Buccaneers don’t actually clinch the division until Week 16, and the Saints actually spend part of November sitting in first place. It’s just that Tampa’s quality ends up being too much for the other teams to overcome, and they jump from 5-5 to 10-7 over the last couple months of the season to win this division with a respectable record, retaking their spot atop the division.

The Saints, as mentioned, find themselves at 5-4 in November after back-to-back wins, and are sitting in first place in the South! A closer look at the schedule, though, shows those wins were over the Raiders, Falcons, Vikings, Browns and Panthers, with every one of them coming in the Superdome. That is not the world’s strongest resume, there, and things go brutally south for them over the back half of the season – only managing to knock off Carson Beck and the Cardinals as everyone else uses New Orleans as their get-right game. In the end, it’s not even the Saints that the Buccaneers have to hold off.

That would be the Panthers. Bryce Young has the worst possible season for Carolina fans – a small improvement on last year, but not enough to really consider him a locked in starter, making the decision on what to do with him going forward extremely tough. To make matters worse, Young gets better over the course of the season, which is part of how they win three of their last five games and at least makes Tampa Bay work a little for the division title. No one knows what Carolina will do at quarterback going forward – and that certainly includes the Panthers.

We know what the Falcons will do at quarterback. A 13-game losing streak, one which sees Tua Tagovailoa benched for Michael Penix benched for Tua Tagovailoa benched for Jack Stroud, ensures that the Falcons will be picking first overall in the 2027 draft. Come on down, Arch Manning! While Bijan Robinson puts up some stats, the utter inability of Atlanta to string wins together means he loses Offensive Player of the Year to Jahmyr Gibbs, too. Insult to injury.

AFC West

Denver Broncos: 12-5
Kansas City Chiefs: 11-6
Los Angeles Chargers: 9-8
Las Vegas Raiders: 3-14

After the Chiefs beat the Broncos in Week 1 to start the season, Denver plays most of the year playing catch-up. Patrick Mahomes isn’t quite back to his old self to start the season, but the early slate is soft enough that Kansas City manages to start 5-0 and sit atop the conference into October. The Dynasty is Back, the headlines blare. And then they lose back-to-back games to the Seahawks and the Broncos in the rematch, putting at least a small kibosh on that. The real proof that they’re not the Chiefs of Old come with their three-game road trip in the back half of the season – the Bills, Rams and Bengals, contenders all. The Dynasty Chiefs would go at least 2-1 here, and maybe sweep the lot. This year’s Chiefs strike out, losing all three. They’re still good, don’t get me wrong – 11-6 earns them the fifth seed. But they’re clearly not quite all the way back. Not yet, at any rate.

Denver, meanwhile, has to soul search after starting the year 2-3 – dropping games not only to the Chiefs, but the 49ers and Chargers as well. Offensive coordinator Davis Webb vows to open up the offense, and that’s what they do, shocking the Chiefs with the Bo Nix DEEP BALL attack, of all things, for the biggest win of the season for Denver. From there, Nix doesn’t exactly become the next Anthony Richardson or anything, but he does not repeat as failed completion leader, as Denver’s offense discovers that the field exists beyond five yards past the line of scrimmage. Couple that with a defense that’s still devastating, and the Broncos do not lose back-to-back games the rest of the way. 12-5 earns them the division title and the #2 seed.

The Chargers offense looks…better, under Mike McDaniel, but it’s the inside of the line that collapses and hurts them in 2026, as opposed to the tackles in 2025. The Chargers remain frustrating for most of the year, but things do begin to seem to click more down the stretch – wins over the 49ers and Chiefs bookend the McDaniel revenge victory over the Dolphin, and the Chargers do eventually pull themselves over .500. Now, if they can just get Justin Herbert a little more help, maybe they’ll have something in 2027.

The Raiders start out strong, with Kirk Cousins leading them to victory over the Miami Dolphins. They do not win another game until after their bye week, when Fernando Mendoza comes in and gives them two wins in three weeks, including a big upset over the Chargers which is used as hope for the season to come. In between, the Raiders do a lot of losing, and stumble to a pretty hopeless 3-14 record.

AFC North

Cincinnati Bengals: 10-7
Baltimore Ravens: 10-7
Pittsburgh Steelers: 9-8
Cleveland Browns: 3-14

The Steelers are the ones in first place in the North for most of the year – 12 of the 18 weeks of the season, actually. They’re helped by a 6-2 record at the bye, though that win-loss record is very fraudulent. They beat Atlanta, New Orleans and Cleveland convincingly – but only once, with the other Browns game being annoyingly close, sandwiched in between close wins over the Bengals and Colts. A team that maybe “should” be 4-4 on aggregate instead sits at four games over .500, and they come back to earth the rest of the way. The hot start is enough to keep the streak of no losing seasons alive, but it’s not enough to get Pittsburgh into the postseason. Aaron Rodgers does, in fact, retire after the season, and it looks like Will Howard will be the guy for 2027, to much consternation.

The Ravens…also do not win the division. Or make the playoffs. 10-7 is something of a return to form for them, and they don’t blow any late-game leads like they did under John Harbaugh. But it’s the conference record that ends up doing them in. While teams in the AFC East can beat up on the Dolphins and Jets all day, the Ravens drop a game each to the Bengals and Steelers, as well as falling to the Bills, Texans and Colts. Their most impressive win in the conference is either the Chargers or Jaguars, and it turns out neither of those teams are playing in January, either. Still, they would have won the division if…

…they hadn’t lost in Week 17 to Cincinnati! The Bengals spend the vast majority of the season on the outside of the playoff picture looking in. They start 2-4, dropping games to Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Houston and, embarrassingly enough, Miami. A player’s-only meeting in October bodes ill for Zac Taylor’s future but, to everyone’s surprise, Cincinnati starts winning games. Lots of games, in bunches. Sure, the schedule goes through a pretty easy patch in the middle of the year, but the Bengals do manage to dispatch the Chiefs in Week 14 and, in a close affair, the Ravens the week before the season ends. That doesn’t quite clinch things for them; they do still have to beat Cleveland in Week 18 to win the division and the #4 seed. But they do do that, because…

The Browns are just as bad as you feared. Deshaun Watson gets two months, and leads the Browns to a 1-7 record, before a three-pick, six-sack day against the Steelers finally ends the Watson experiment in Cleveland for good. Shedeur Sanders gets the nod the rest of the way, and, after the bye week, actually does manage to string a few good games together. Cleveland beats Las Vegas in Week 12, and then beats Atlanta in Week 14 in what ends up being the game that decides the #1 overall pick. They put up a good fight against Indianapolis, too, and Sanders’ DVOA is…well, it’s still negative, but it hovers around 22nd in the league rather than being historically, all-time bad. Whether they take a quarterback with the second overall pick remains an open question, but most pundits think that Dante Moore will be the next name on the Cleveland jersey of shame.

AFC East

Buffalo Bills: 11-6
New England Patriots: 10-7
New York Jets: 4-13
Miami Dolphins: 3-14

Yup, it’s a two-team division, alright.

Your defending AFC champion Patriots start out in a 1-3 hole, and the calls of “schedule merchant” rain down on them. Never mind that those losses come against the Seahawks, Jaguars and Bills, all playoff teams from a year ago; that’s the point – the Patriots rode one of history’s softest schedules to the postseason a year ago, and now that they have to play actual football teams, they struggle. Wins over the Raiders and Jets do little to douse that, and losing a shootout to the Bears solidifies it in stone – the Pats are pretenders. Never mind that they beat Green Bay. And then win the rematch over Buffalo in Foxborough. Or take down Denver in Week 17, something the Bills can’t manage to do. Surely, they’ll make no noise going forward….right?

Buffalo only officially clinches the division in Week 18 as both the contenders have games against the pushovers, but they lead the division essentially wire-to-wire. The second-half loss to the Patriots keeps the division at least interesting, and the loss the next week to the Packers takes the bye week out of the question for Buffalo – enough so that there are a few whispers, late in the season, about the Bills biffing it again in the postseason – but the Bills look like standard-issue contenders for most of the year. The offense is more explosive with the addition of D.J. Moore, Josh Allen looks poised to win MVP – it’s a good season, all in all. But the Bills don’t judge themselves by good regular seasons, so there’s unfinished business after they claim the #3 seed.

The Jets, as usual, do not look good for most of the year. There’s a brief stretch in the middle of the year, when they get the Browns, Dolphins and Raiders in a four-week stretch, where they show that they’re bad, but not terrible-bad, and briefly pull their record to 3-5. But that’s kind of it, as the vultures calling for Aaron Glenn’s head get louder and louder as the year goes on. And as usual, they screw something up late to hurt their draft position. A week before the end of the season, the Jets upset the Vikings on a fourth-quarter pick-six. That lowers their draft position from third to sixth in what ends up being a four-quarterback draft, meaning that if they want one of the big quarterbacks, they’re going to have to trade up.

The Dolphins are not trying in 2026, so I won’t, either. They beat the Bengals, Jets and Bears and end up drafting fourth, in range to draft Darian Mensah and start with a clean(…ish) cap in 2027.

AFC South

Houston Texans: 13-4
Indianapolis Colts: 11-6
Jacksonville Jaguars: 7-10
Tennessee Titans: 4-13

The Houston Texans end up the best team in the AFC. Probably. The defense is just as good as it was last year, and the offense? While it’s not going to be setting any records anytime soon, C.J. Stroud and company do end up in the top 10 in DVOA, thanks to an actual run game with David Montgomery. Stroud doesn’t find quite the same explosiveness he had as a rookie, but the offense does stretch further than it did in 2025, and they still don’t turn the ball over much – the improvements he saw last year sticking around. It doesn’t fully erase the memory of the playoff implosion, but Houstonites breath a sigh of relief. An early loss to the Colts is quickly erased by long winning streaks, as Houston takes over the AFC South lead in October and never relinquishes it – and their win over Indianapolis in Week 11 vaults them to the top spot in the conference, which they hold the rest of the way. It’s not quite all sunshine and roses, though – losses to the Packers and Eagles down the stretch bring up questions about how strong the AFC is compared to their NFC counterparts. But every AFC contender they face falls to the Texans, and they earn the bye week.

The Colts, meanwhile, have to work for their playoff berth. They sit at 7-6 midway though December. The defense has clearly taken a step back as the rebuild goes on, and Daniel Jones has been…well, above average, but not like the Jones he was to start 2025. But when the chips are down, they come through – four straight wins to finish the season writes their Hollywood ending, including a demonstrative win over the Bengals in Week 16 to essentially clinch a wildcard spot – the sixth seed, as it eventually turns out, as they reach the playoffs for the first time since 2020.

The Jaguars spent this offseason not improving the team, willing to ride last year’s second-half surge into this year. As the folks at FTN like hammering home, though, second-half improvements are not, in fact, guaranteed to carry over, and that hot streak to end the year never materializes in 2026. The Jaguars are stunned to find themselves 2-4 at the bye – sure, it’s a tough opening schedule, but to drop all four of Denver, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Houston? That doesn’t work for a team that was talking about redefining how football was played 18 months ago. In fact, Jacksonville is never even in playoff position after Week 4, as Trevor Lawrence returns to being maddingly inconsistent – Jacksonville once again leads the league in drops, no matter who they throw out there at receiver. Jacksonville finishes dead last in rushing DVOA, with neither Bhayshul Tuten nor Chris Rodriguez managing to do much. None of their 2026 draft picks contribute in any meaningful way, and Travis Hunter, their top 2025 draft pick, bounces between being semi-full-time corner and situational wideout, not doing particularly well at either task. Without reinforcements to shore up last year’s gains, the Jaguars plummet right back to the middle of the pack.

As for the Titans? Cam Ward shows improvement, and the defense approaches the glorious ranks of mediocrity. There’s a lot of “almosts” for the 2026 Titans. They nearly beat the Eagles in Week 2. They put a major scare into the Jaguars in Week 10. The Colts thank their lucky stars they get out of Tennessee with a victory in Week 15. They’re competitive with Houston until the fourth quarter. They do actually, manage to take down the Steelers at the end of the year in Ward’s best game to date. But the rest of those almosts end up as losses, with the Titans generally only beating the Jets, Browns and Falcons of the world – a tier up from the league worst, but nothing more. Still, there are some signs of progress and optimism, and I suppose that’s something.

Wild Card Round

The Seahawks blow out the Buccaneers, as an auto-bid team is no match for one of the top two teams in the league, looking to settle a score with the Rams in the next round.

The Lions get their revenge over the Packers with the venue swapped to their house. Green Bay may have prevented Detroit from getting the bye, but the Lions are going to the Divisional Round anyway with a 10-point win over their Lambeau rivals.

The 49ers take a four-point lead on a Brock Purdy-to-De’Zhaun Stribling touchdown with four minutes left against the Eagles, but that’s too much time on the clock. Philadelphia just pounds Saquon Barkley over and over against the candy-soft interior of the 49ers line, reaching the end zone as time expires to get revenge for last year’s Wild Card loss.

The upset of the round comes when the Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs wash out in the wildcard round, losing a shootout to the Cincinnati Bengals in one of the highest-scoring postseason games in NFL history. Joe Burrow throws for 500 yards and five touchdowns, as the rest of the league sighs in relief that the Chiefs were actually put down.

Denver gets to actually play Bo Nix this time in their matchup against the Patriots, and win a close one. Doesn’t make up for the AFC Championship loss last year, but it is, at least, a moral victory.

The Bills run all over the Colts, taking an early lead and then teeing off on Daniel Jones the rest of the afternoon.

Divisional Round

The Rams and Seahawks get their rubber match, and it’s the defenses that show off here. Both teams are held under 20 points, as Chris Shula auditions for a head coaching job somewhere and Mike Macdonald continues to checkmate McVay’s offensive schemes. This time, though, it’s the Jerrys and Joes, not the Xs and Os, that get the victory. While Seattle manages to mostly keep Sam Darnold away from Miles Garrett and Aaron Donald, the Rams have too many horses to stop forever, and it’s a crucial strip sack from Byron Young that sets up Harrison Mevis’ game-winning field goal at the gun.

The Lions and Eagles go to overtime in a back-and-forth battle – which ends when Brian Branch catches Jalen Hurts trying to go over the middle one time too many, intercepting a pass intended for Makai Lemon and returning it into the red zone, where the Lions finish things off with a Jahmyr Gibbs touchdown run.

The Broncos narrowly escape with a victory. With Buffalo trailing by two late in the game, Josh Allen leads the Bills into field goal range – a 45-yarder, which seems fair in the Denver atmosphere. Despite sitting on a time out, Joe Brady opts to let the clock tick down rather than taking one more shot to get closer – and Tyler Bass’s kick sails wide left.

The Texans destroy the Bengals’ offensive line and end up with the most convincing victory of the day, a double-digit win over a team that may not have had any rights to get this far into the postseason, anyway.

Conference Championships

Houston continues their defensive showing against the Broncos, picking Bo Nix off twice and limiting Denver to just five first downs all day long – Air Nix runs out of steam. Stroud throws for 250 yards and a pair of scores, as Houston goes to their first Super Bowl in franchise history.

The Rams destroy the Lions. Utterly dominate in all three phases. Both Davante Adams and Puka Nacua go over 150 yards receiving. The defense picks up five sacks on Jared Goff, who spends the day running for his life. After months, the Rams finally look to be the team they were promised to be to start the season – the unstoppable Super Team….

Super Bowl

And so it proves to be at the end of all things. The Houston defense does slow the Rams down, much like Seattle had two weeks prior. You can’t stop Matthew Stafford and company for a full 60 minutes, but you can limit the damage, and DeMeco Ryans throws more blitzes than normal into the mix, a changeup which does in fact stifle Los Angeles for a half before Sean McVay and company adapt.

But C.J. Stroud picks the worst possible time to turn back into 2025 Playoff Stroud, going into full “I must win the game on this play” heroics against the Rams defense. That doesn’t result in the interceptions it did last year. It mostly manifests in holding the ball far too long, which is how Myles Garrett is able to record four sacks and a forced fumble, tying L.C. Greenwood’s record for sacks in a single Super Bowl and becoming the first defensive Super Bowl MVP since Von Miller in Super Bowl 50. Having finally escaped Cleveland, Garrett finds himself high on the mountaintop immediately, king of the world and Super Bowl champion.

In the ensuing celebration, Matthew Stafford announces his retirement. Even superteams do not last forever.