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Bill Barnwell, ESPN Staff Writer
With the NFL preseason in full swing, we are just weeks away from real, competitive professional football. Thirty-two teams have aspirations of advancing to the postseason. After seeing the Texans, who finished 3-13-1 in 2022, jump from anonymous also-rans to division champs in a matter of months last season, no franchise is going to be counting itself out in August. Footballs bounce in funny ways, and if a team really landed a few difference-makers in the draft and hired the right coaches during the offseason, it can go from the basement to the penthouse quicker than anybody expects.
I’m focusing below on the 14 teams hoping to defend their territory from a year ago. In the first three iterations of the 14-team postseason era, about half the teams in a given season have made it back the following year. Seven returned to the playoffs after the 2020 and 2021 seasons, and eight made it back a year ago. This isn’t simply teams at the margins coming up short, either. Both top seeds from 2021 (the Packers and Titans) missed the playoffs in 2022. Last season the Bengals, who had made it to the Super Bowl and the AFC Championship Game over the prior two seasons, went 9-8 and finished last in the AFC North.
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I’m going to rank the 14 playoff teams from last season by their chances of returning to the postseason. And perhaps not coincidentally, given the success rate for teams making it back in the brief 14-team era, I believe there’s a significant tier gap between the top seven teams on this list and the bottom seven. It’s too simplistic to suggest the seven most likely teams here will all make it back in and the seven least likely will miss, given how a quarterback injury or a couple of missed field goals can swing seasons, but just keep that history in mind as I run through these teams.
I’ll start with the team I believe is most likely to return to the playoffs and work my way down to the least likely. I’m also including odds from the ESPN Football Power Index (FPI) for each team returning to the playoffs, so if you don’t agree with my opinions, maybe you’ll be more inclined to go along with ESPN’s predictive algorithm. Just about everyone agrees where this list should start, right?
Jump to a team:
49ers | Bills | Browns
Bucs | Chiefs | Cowboys
Dolphins | Eagles | Lions | Packers
Rams | Ravens | Steelers | Texans
Chances to make the playoffs: 87.1% (FPI’s best odds to return to postseason)
Why they’re No. 1: They’re still the Chiefs.