Tag Archives: 2025 NFL season

NFL Power Rankings

NFL Power Rankings heading into the fourth quarter of the 2025 season:

We’re three quarters through the 2025 NFL season and it’s time for one more look at all 32 teams. As always, please bear in mind that these are power *rankings* rather than standings. So you may see one team be listed above another with a better record or even one they’ve already lost to head-to-head at some point – the objective is to weigh them against the rest of the league at large, and how many opponents I’d favor them over. Especially, as playoff seedings are starting to materialize, we’re somewhat looking ahead at who can go the distance, even though this is more meant to be a snapshot of this moment.

I took injuries into account and weighed current form more heavily, while compared to earlier in the season, we have a pretty good picture of what teams are in all three facets of the game. Although you’ll find a variety of statistics and advanced metrics to support my arguments, they’re all primarily grounded in having watched every single matchup up to this opponent, either on the broadcast, the All-22, or both.

Let’s get to the full rankings:

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NFL Film Breakdowns

Justin Herbert has entered the Giant Robot Fighting arena

The discourse around Herbert for the better part of his career has been mostly nauseating to me, but he had yet to establish himself among the top tier of quarterbacks in the NFL. Through two games of 2025, it appears as if he’s unlocked his highest level yet – and we’ll review his tape!

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NFL Weekly Recap

Key takeaways from all 2025 week one NFL games:

We’re one week down for the 2025 NFL season and as always, there was a lot going. Before we even had one snap from scrimmage, we had a star defender ejected for spitting at an opponent in the kickoff game, then a great AFC West quarterback battle in Sao Paulo, a Sunday slate filled with revenge stories, an early game of the year contender on Sunday night and another big-time comeback to close things out on Monday.

Understandably, there’ll be a lot of overreactions from what happened in these opening games, and while we saw more established players participating in preseason, there was still some rust to shake off, and defenses setting the tone in several matchups. Nonetheless, there‘s a lot to take away for now, as we get our first look at new schemes, rookies, units, etc.

I‘m going to outline three takeaways for all 16 games based on watching the broadcasts and/or tape afterwards. Therefore, these will obviously be rather subjective in terms of on what stood out to me, but I’ll try to encapsulate what matters most for individual players and teams here.

Let’s break it all down!

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NFL Predictions

Bold predictions for the 2025 NFL season:

I’ve already previewed the entire 2025 NFL season in detail, but as an annual tradition, the day before we kick things off – here are my six bold predictions for the year!

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NFL Film Breakdowns

NFL Preseason 2025 standouts:

Two weeks of the preseason (plus the Hall of Fame game) are in the books and it’s time to shine some light on players who have popped so far! We’ll go through some clips for three players on offense and defense each!

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NFL Top 100

My NFL Top 100 Players of 2025:

As this year’s official NFL top 100 countdown is nearing a close – even though the network pushed back its release by nearly a month – I’m once again presenting my personal version as an alternative. Any content in this format has a certain level of subjectivity, but I believe in my process of putting the list together more so than how the top 20 lists for all the players polled are merged together.

Just as a reminder of what the criteria is supposed to be – a ranking of the best 100 players heading into 2025, regardless of position. Obviously, it’s challenging to not weigh the value of quarterbacks or adequately compare names with very different jobs/roles. However, the aim here to me always is to find the right balance between what someone provides for their specific team and also project how they would fare on a theoretical average franchise, without a defined scheme.

My one quick disclaimer here is that I didn’t include any players coming off long-term injuries, are dealing with pending suspensions or other factors that’ll affect their performance this upcoming season in significant fashion. That’s why the following names weren’t eligible – Christian McCaffrey, Tyreek Hill, Andrew Thomas, Sam Cosmi, Aidan Hutchinson, Alim McNeill, Christian Wilkins and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah.

This is what I ended up with:

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NFL Offseason, NFL Predictions

NFL teams most likely to go from worst to first in 2025:

With how intent the NFL is on keeping an even playing field, we see a couple of teams turn things around every year. I ranked the eight teams who just finished last inside their division by how most likely to improve to number one!

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NFL Offseason

What does success look like for your favorite NFL team in 2025?

The following conversation goes against what the NFL’s shield is trying to sell the public at the start of every single season – the idea of all 32 teams having a chance to hoist the Lombardi Trophy at the end of it. As much as I love how they strive for parity, conceiving anything but achieving the ultimate goal as a failure would always leave all but one fan base dissatisfied. Generally, I sway away from asking questions like the one in the title, but due to several factors, I thought laying out which factors we should pay attention to and what constitutes a “successful campaign” was particularly interesting this year.

I’m fully aware that this by no means is an innovative concept, but looking back at this past season, I thought the gap between “the rich and the poor” was as large as ever once we got to around Thanksgiving. So I do believe it’s important to offer a frame of context for how we should probably view what these franchises are about to put onto the field once we kick things off. For some teams, simply measuring it by where the journey ends for them in 2025 is fair, yet for others, showing growth in certain areas may be even more crucial for their future outlook.

We’ll go through them all by division here!

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NFL Draft, NFL Offseason

Second- and third-year breakout candidates for the 2025 NFL season – Defense edition:

We’re back for the second half of yet another two-part series, only this time in written form, as we switch sides of the ball and talk about some of my favorite second- and third-year defenders, who I expect to take the next step. Just like we did in the offensive edition last week, we’ll discuss seven players today.

Once again, to identify what would qualify a “breakout” or rather players excluded in this discussion, I’m largely relying on statistical measurements that they haven’t reached yet – no front-seven defenders who recorded double-digit sacks or tackles for loss, players who intercepted 4+ passes, earned a Pro Bowl/All-Pro nominations or are just generally considered one of the better performers at their respective positions. I also generally stay away from players who have barely seen action in the pros yet. That makes names like Cardinals defensive lineman Darius Robinson and Eagles cornerback Kelee Ringo, for example.

Daiyan Henley emerged as one of the best linebackers in all of football after making the list a year ago, but I’m still waiting on names like B.J. Ojulari and JuJu Brents to stay healthy and show if they can justify me putting them up there in the most recent version of this. Let’s get into these next few names for 2025:

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NFL Draft, NFL Offseason

Second- and third-year breakout candidates for the 2025 NFL season – Offense edition:

These last two months have been loaded with video content, discussing basically every single offseason move made by all 32 teams and, most recently, going through one burning question for each of them. So now it’s time for one of my favorite projects in written form every year – breakout candidates. Split up into offense and then defense next week, we’re looking at seven players on each side of the ball, coming off their rookie or second season, who I project to make a leap in 2026.

Since it’s tough to set the guidelines for what would qualify a “breakout” for the purposes of this exercise, I’m relying mostly on statistical metrics that the players in question haven’t reached yet – no 1000-yard rushers or receivers, players that have scored double-digit touchdowns, earned a Pro Bowl/All-Pro nominations or are just generally considered one of the better performers at their respective positions already. I also generally stay away from players who have barely seen action in the pros yet. That makes names like Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy and Steelers offensive tackle Troy Fautanu ineligible, for example.

Chase Brown, Khalil Shakir and Cam Jurgens all delivered on the lofty expectations I set for them last July, while Anthony Richardson is someone I’m still rooting for to reach his sky-high potential. Here’s this year’s list:

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