The NFL playoffs here and we’re left with a very interesting, largely unexpected field of contenders! I put together the most info-packed preview of the tournament, introducing all 14 teams individually and breaking down each matchup, leading up to Super Bowl LX!
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!
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!
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!
We officially put a close to our coverage of the talent acquisition period of the calendar, as we’ve extensively discussed everything heading into and coming out of the NFL Draft, before weaving it into the rest of the roster construction in our month-long video series, where I broke down every single move and its meaning one division at a time.
Now, it’s time to draw conclusions one more time through a league-wide lens and identify the position groups that were most improved through free agency, trades and the draft. This is based on what each roster looked in week 18, not taking injuries into account, whether they affected who was actually able to be on the field at that time or those who may linger into the season.
And one more disclaimer – I always look at this exercise in more of a holistic sense. One singular player may give an entire unit a very different feel, but I try to point out those groups that at least made multiple meaningful acquisitions.
Here’s what I came up with:
We’ve reached the final episode of our divisional draft & roster review series for 2025! And we’re closing things out with the AFC West, who just sent three teams to the playoffs and saw the other one make some drastic changes to the key figures of their organization!
The NFL playoff bracket is set and I took on the exercise of previewing/predicting every single matchup, leading up to Super Bowl LIX! I’ll share a few thoughts on each side and how I came to all my decisions!
We’ve reached the final week of the NFL season and the calendar year 2025. So, with the playoff participants at least largely established, while I’m generally not a big believer in them personally, I took the opportunity to come up with resolutions for each of the six teams who have already clinched a spot on either side of the bracket.
Since the Denver Broncos, Miami Dolphins and Cincinnati Bengals are still fighting for the final Wildcard berth in the AFC and the Atlanta Falcons could still take away the NFC South crown from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the task for them is to just take care of business (and hope for some help). Therefore, I didn’t give them their own paragraph.
For this exercise, I largely focused on personnel usage, schematic details and attitude in how teams should approach future matchups. Let’s dig in:
I forgot to post this here last week already – so please bear in mind that the numbers are now slightly different!
Even though the NFL is headlined by superstar players, often times it’s the guys who don’t get talked about a whole lot that make a big difference for their team. So I decided to highlight three names on offense and defense each, to give them they attention they deserve!
With the NFL season just around the corner, instead of bringing up storylines and figures about dominating conversations on TV already, I wanted to discuss a few names that maybe we don’t fully understand who they are or how big a factor they may be in a new role/place, but have the potential to define the landscape of the league.
Halil's Real Footballtalk 