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It hasn’t even been two full years since the Washington Commanders were the hottest team in football. Jayden Daniels – a rookie at the time – helped the team upset the No. 1 seed Detroit Lions in the playoffs before falling to a Philadelphia Eagles team that went on to win the Super Bowl. When a season like that happens, it’s easy to think a team has turned a corner.
That’s not always how it goes.
Washington proved that in 2025, going 5-12 as the roster aged quickly, injuries piled up, and the close-game luck that carried them the year before simply dried up. It was a tough fall for a fanbase that thought their team had arrived.
Regression is one of the NFL’s most powerful forces – and every season, it claims a few teams that fans thought were ready to take the next step. Here are five teams most at risk of coming back to the pack this season, starting with the biggest reasons for concern.
Chicago Bears
There’s one factor that could flip the entire narrative for Chicago – Caleb Williams. He still had accuracy issues last season, but the growth was real, and a genuine MVP-caliber leap in year three wouldn’t be out of the question. That said, almost everything else in the numbers points the wrong way for the Bears.
Their turnover differential was +22 last season – five better than any other team and nine ahead of third place. That kind of margin is nearly impossible to maintain. According to TheOddsBreakers.com, Chicago’s 11-6 record came with a three-win gap over their Pythagorean win total (which estimates what a team’s record should have been based on point differential) – the biggest such gap in the NFL. Eight wins in one-score games, including one in the playoffs, did a lot of the heavy lifting.
The schedule doesn’t help either. Chicago goes from the seventh easiest slate in the NFL (calculated by DVOA) to the sixth toughest this season, per SharpFootball.com.
Williams’ development is real – but he might need to take a massive jump just to offset how much regression is stacked against this team.
New England Patriots
Everyone already knows New England played one of the easiest schedules in recent NFL history last season. If that were the only problem facing the 14-3 Patriots, it’d be worth noting but not necessarily alarming on its own.
It’s not the only problem.
The Patriots were also the luckiest team in the league when it came to adjusted games lost due to injury – a metric developed by FTN Fantasy’s Aaron Schatz. That kind of health advantage doesn’t repeat. Seven wins in games decided by a touchdown or less is another number that won’t hold up. Drake Maye was sensational – nearly winning NFL MVP – and he’s still getting better. New England has a legitimate young core. But some level of regression is basically inevitable here; the question is just how many fewer wins they end up with.
Denver Broncos
Yes, picking 14-win teams to regress is low-hanging fruit – where else are they really going to go? But the Broncos have some specific numbers that are worth paying attention to.
Denver went 11-2 in games decided by eight points or fewer last season, and 6-2 in games decided by three points or fewer. A great defense and Sean Payton as head coach gives the Broncos a genuine edge in close games – but no team sustains a record that lopsided in tight contests. The 2025 Kansas City Chiefs are a good reminder of how quickly that can flip. A strong team can become a .500 team in close games almost overnight, and that’s enough to cost Denver several wins.
Jacksonville Jaguars
The Jaguars went from four wins in 2024 to 13 in 2025. Baseball analyst Bill James coined a concept called the “plexiglass principle” decades ago – the idea that a team that improves massively one season tends to come back down the following year. Jacksonville fits that profile almost perfectly.
It’s not just theory, though. The Jaguars were one of the quietest teams in the NFL this offseason, signing just six free agents for a total of $33 million – the fewest signings for the least money of any team in the league, according to Spotrac. They also didn’t have a first-round pick in the draft after trading it away in the Travis Hunter deal back in 2025.
Then there’s the fumble luck. Jacksonville recovered 64.3% of fumbles last season – the second-luckiest rate in the NFL – which helped drive a +13 turnover differential that ranked third league-wide. Fumble recovery is almost entirely random. A roster that got worse in the offseason, leaning on numbers like that, is a tough sell for another 13-win season.
Carolina Panthers
It’s easy to remember Carolina as a team on the rise – they made the playoffs and pushed the Rams in the wild-card round. But they went 8-9 and only snuck in because of what happened elsewhere in the division on the final Sunday of the regular season.
Look closer and the picture gets worse. Seven of their eight wins came by seven points or fewer; six came by three points or fewer. They were outscored by 69 points on the season. Carolina ranked 25th in DVOA – 25th on offense, 21st on defense – and finished 26th in EPA (expected points added) per play on offense while ranking 23rd in EPA per play allowed on defense. That’s not a playoff team by most measures.
Now they’re staring down the third-toughest schedule in the NFL, per SharpFootball.com. Carolina spent on defensive help in free agency and it’s a fairly young group with room to grow – but the numbers from last season don’t suggest a team that’s ready to build on eight wins. A step back is a very real possibility.
