Predicting NFL teams most likely to improve in 2025 season

It’s time to get better. Every offseason, I run through various NFL minutiae and collect all the data I can to try to figure out what’s going to happen in the season to come. While much of that depends on the decisions teams made and the people organizations did (or did not) add during the spring, you can learn a lot about what might happen in 2025 by taking a closer look at what was happening under the radar in 2024.

It’s my annual look at the teams that are likely to improve in the upcoming season. This is the ninth year I’ve run this column at ESPN, and the results over the past eight seasons have been pretty solid. Over that stretch, the teams mentioned in this column have improved 31 out of 38 times, with the average jump coming by 3.4 wins per 17 games.

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Last year’s column went 4-1, with the Patriots sticking at 4-13 as the only holdout. (I was an Anthony Richardson 2-point conversion away from going 5-0.) The Cardinals jumped from 4-13 to 8-9, and the Chiefs rode their luck as they improved from 11-6 to 15-2, but the real exciting mentions came in two unexpected playoff teams. The Chargers improved from 5-12 to 11-6, and there was an even bigger step forward in Washington, where the Commanders went from 4-13 to 12-5, advancing to the NFC Championship Game in the process.

Expecting any of these teams to make it to their conference title game is a bit of a stretch, but there’s room for solid improvement and the potential for an unexpected playoff team or two in the mix. While the Chargers were the clear team that stuck out as an obvious candidate to improve a year ago, no team stood out to me as the surefire pick in this year’s mix. With that in mind, let’s start with the franchise the Commanders flew by on their rise up the NFC East ranks in 2024:

Jump to a team:
49ers | Bears
Giants | Jaguars | Raiders

Record in 2024: 3-14
Point differential in 2024: minus-142
2024 record in games decided by seven or fewer points: 1-7
Projected strength of schedule, via ESPN’s FPI: Toughest in NFL

After two years on the likely-to-decline side of the ledger, the Giants find themselves shifting the other way. The 9-7-1 playoff season Brian Daboll & Co. put together with quarterback Daniel Jones in 2023 was a false dawn, and they promptly went 9-25 over the next two seasons. There are reasons to believe they should finally take a step in the right direction in 2025, however.

First, they really weren’t as bad as their record suggested a season ago. I won’t pretend to suggest this was a good team, but the Giants were 1-7 in one-score games. Some of those games weren’t quite as close as they seemed — and they included losses to backup signal-callers Jake Haener and Tanner McKee — but there also were some competitive performances.

A Malik Nabers drop cost the Giants a chance to close out what likely would have been a win over the Commanders in September. New York was within one score of the Steelers in the fourth quarter on “Monday Night Football” in Week 8, only for a well-designed 2-point conversion attempt to be terribly executed. Against the Saints in Week 14, one Graham Gano field goal was wiped off the board by an unnecessary roughness penalty, while another that would have tied the score with 11 seconds to go was blocked. In Week 10, a Tyrone Tracy fumble two plays into overtime basically handed the Panthers an overtime victory.

I understand if narrow losses to NFC South teams aren’t exactly making you go out and buy Giants championship gear. Let’s set expectations appropriately. This was a three-win team last season. It finished 31st by ESPN’s FPI and 28th by defense-adjusted value over average (DVOA). Sometimes, good teams can look like bad teams because they were unlucky or had terrible timing. The Giants were bad and unlucky.

The luck will bounce back. Their record in one-score games won’t be quite as bad. While they weren’t overrun by injuries last season, finishing 13th in adjusted games lost, the guys who did get hurt were irreplaceable. Defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence, the team’s best player at any position, missed the final five games with a dislocated elbow. Fellow defensive lineman Kayvon Thibodeaux, coming off an 11.5-sack campaign, missed five games in midseason, all losses.

The injury that truly put the Giants in an unrecoverable tailspin was the Lisfranc injury suffered by left tackle Andrew Thomas — their best offensive lineman — that ended his season after six games. Over Daboll’s three years in New York, the Giants have averaged minus -0.02 expected points added per play with Thomas on the field and minus-0.11 EPA per play without him. That’s the equivalent of being the league’s 21st-best offense with Thomas and its worst without him. He played 16 games in 2022, but he has been able to suit up for only 16 over the ensuing two seasons. A healthier Thomas is a prerequisite for New York looking competent on offense this season.

There are some elements of performance that are almost entirely a product of luck, like fumble recovery rates. Others are a combination of skill and a small sample size, which can create both an outsize impact and huge amounts of unsustainable variance from year to year. Defensive back interception totals are a good example; there undoubtedly is skill involved in catching the ball and getting in the right places, but the difference between a big year and a disappointing one in terms of interception opportunities might come down to four or five wobbly footballs.

New York had a bad offense in 2024, but even clearly abject offenses aren’t as hopeless in the red zone as the Giants were last season. They got to the red zone only 2.6 times per game, which ranked 26th in the league, and they scored touchdowns on just 43.2% of their opportunities once they got there. That figure ranked 307th out of 320 offenses over the past decade. Offenses that average fewer than four points per red zone trip since 2001 improve by an average of 0.7 points per possession the following season, upgrade their points scored by an average of 66 per 17 games and see their win total leap by an average of two per 17 games. (You can blame the move to a 17-game schedule for those awkward per-17-game statistics.)

They also failed to control the turnover battle. The Giants posted a positive turnover margin in just one game, the 45-33 shootout against the Colts in Week 17. They’re just the fifth team in the past 30 years to finish the regular season with one turnover margin victory, and the first since 2012, when the Chiefs and Eagles both managed that feat and got Andy Reid sent from Philadelphia to Kansas City in the process.

Even if the Giants are luckier, though, no one will be excited if they are merely a bad team with reasonable outcomes. Is there a universe in which they actually have the underlying talent to be more competitive? Maybe. That starts, as it does for virtually every good or great Giants team, with the defensive line. Through the first eight weeks of 2024, they had a whopping 12.5% sack rate, the best figure for any defense through the first eight weeks of a season since 2000. With the shift away from the Don Martindale scheme, they also did that while blitzing only 29% of the time, which was just above league average.

They weren’t able to keep up that performance, but they have the potential to have one of the league’s best defensive lines. In addition to getting Lawrence and Thibodeaux back, New York returns Brian Burns, and it used its top-five draft pick on Penn State edge rusher Abdul Carter, who had 12 sacks and a nation-high 24 tackles for loss last season.

That sort of pass rush usually leads to strip sacks and interceptions, but the Giants forced just 15 takeaways last season and had the league’s third-lowest interception rate. A dismal year from 2023 first-round corner Deonte Banks didn’t help, and they sorely missed safety Xavier McKinney, who had an All-Pro season with Green Bay. Giants general manager Joe Schoen made two significant additions to the secondary in signing corner Paulson Adebo and safety Jevon Holland, which should give a unit that ranked 31st in Total QBR allowed when opposing quarterbacks went unpressured some hope of holding up in coverage.

The most notable change this offseason obviously comes at quarterback, where the Jones era was brought to a close for contractual reasons before the end of last season. Over the past two campaigns, the combination of Jones, Tommy DeVito, Tyrod Taylor, Drew Lock and Tim Boyle combined to rank 29th in Total QBR, even with the Giants adding a wildly talented wideout to the fold in Nabers.

Over that same stretch, Russell Wilson (25th) and Jameis Winston (28th) rank ahead of Jones (35th) in QBR. There’s excitement about first-round pick Jaxson Dart, who represents the first significant investment in a new quarterback under center for Daboll and Schoen. This coaching staff coaxed what was frankly too good of a season out of Jones in 2023. It would be unreasonable to project sudden stardom for Dart or a throwback season for Wilson, but there’s both a higher floor with the veterans and a higher ceiling for Dart than what the Giants have had at quarterback over the previous two seasons.

The story surrounding Dart and the biggest reason to temper any excitement about the Giants, though, has revolved around the first eight weeks of the season. The Giants will play six of their first eight contests against 2024 playoff teams, including two versus the defending champion Eagles, a home game against the Chiefs and an away game versus the Broncos, who had the league’s best defense by EPA per play last season. Starting Dart from Day 1 might feel like throwing a young quarterback to the wolves.

And yet, with the league’s toughest schedule this season, it’s hardly as if there’s going to be a great time to sneak Dart in without worrying about him facing stiff competition. This is widely seen as a make-or-break season for Daboll and Schoen, and it’s unclear what they need to do to justify holding onto their jobs. I would hardly be surprised if the Giants doubled their win total this season, but the brutal schedule might keep them from advancing any further. And after two years of frustrating, often ugly football, six wins might not be enough for ownership.

Record in 2024: 6-11
Point differential in 2024: minus-47
2024 record in games decided by seven or fewer points: 2-6
Projected strength of schedule, via ESPN’s FPI: Easiest in NFL

Coming off a second narrow Super Bowl loss to Kansas City, the 2024 49ers were built to win. With Brock Purdy on the third year of his rookie deal and about to become eligible for an extension, they spent $334 million, the second-highest total of any team, to both maintain an elite core and bring in significant defensive depth in free agency. It was Super Bowl or bust.

Well, sometimes bust wins. The 49ers dealt with injuries to key contributors on offense, with Brandon Aiyuk, Christian McCaffrey and Trent Williams all missing significant time. The defensive additions failed to impress, as Leonard Floyd, Isaac Yiadom, and De’Vondre Campbell were all one-and-done. A team that had gone 17-4 and made two deep playoff runs with Purdy as its starter got a mostly healthy season from the quarterback and still fell to 6-11, dropping to last place in the NFC West. With expectations as high as any other franchise in the league, the Niners limped to a mostly irrelevant season, earning just two victories against teams with winning records.

While I don’t think anybody could argue the 49ers were disappointing, here’s where I come in to say that they also were quite a bit unlucky. They were the league’s most injured team, ranking 30th in offensive adjusted games lost and 31st in defensive adjusted games lost. While you might look toward McCaffrey and Williams and suggest they’re prone to missing time, the 49ers were the fourth-healthiest team by this same metric in 2023, with much of the same core on both sides of the ball. We should see a healthier version of this roster in 2025, which would mean fewer snaps for replacement-level players and street free agents signed out of desperation.

The 49ers were more competitive than their record suggested, with some close games ending in frustrating losses. In Week 3 against the Rams, Jake Moody missed a field goal that would have put the 49ers up by 10 with 2:48 to go in the fourth quarter, with the defense collapsing so aggressively afterward that their division rivals managed to win the game in regulation. In Week 5, the Niners were beating the Cardinals and in position to potentially go up by two scores late when Jordan Mason fumbled inside the 10-yard line; Arizona drove the length of the field for a game-winning field goal. Up by four on the Seahawks with 46 seconds left in Week 11, San Francisco gave up scrambles of 16 and 13 yards to Geno Smith and allowed a winning touchdown with 18 seconds left.

Those deciders I mentioned all hint toward San Francisco improving this season. Special teams performance tends to be wildly inconsistent for most teams from year to year, and the 49ers ranked last in special teams win probability added. Moody hit just 70% of his field goals, with Kyle Shanahan perhaps stubbornly banking on Moody’s prior accomplishments and to a player the organization drafted in the third round in 2023. They cut kicker Greg Joseph in camp and appeared to hand the job to Moody, but it’s difficult to imagine the third-year pro having as long of a leash if he struggles this season.

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Riddick insists the 49ers are still rebuilding

Louis Riddick says the 49ers don’t “scare” other teams in the NFL anymore and are still in the rebuilding process.

Fumble recoveries didn’t go the 49ers’ way, as they ended up with just under 46% of the loose balls in their games, which ranked 27th. They lost 15 of 26 fumbles on offense and recovered only six of 20 on defense. They forced just two turnovers over the final nine games after their Week 9 bye, posting the worst turnover rate (2.2%) on a per-drive basis of any team since at least 2000. Unsurprisingly, their record collapsed at the same time; they were 5-4 before that bye and 1-7 afterward, turning the ball over on offense at least once in every game.

One of the reasons the 49ers didn’t force many turnovers is the identities of the guys they faced. About 24% of pass attempts came from backups or QBs who weren’t their team’s preferred starter. They went up against opposing No. 1s on nearly 87% of their pass attempts, the fourth-highest rate in the league. The only non-preferred options they faced were Sam Darnold in Week 2 and Jacoby Brissett in Week 4. (My belief, based on the history of how first-round picks quickly make it into the lineup despite what coaches suggest during camp, is that J.J. McCarthy would have won the starting job in Minnesota if he had stayed healthy.)

It wasn’t just the quarterbacks, either. Everybody the 49ers played seemed tough. They faced the league’s most difficult schedule, per the FPI. Ten of their 17 outings came against teams that won at least 10 games. Even in a down season, the Niners went 4-3 against the teams that weren’t double-digit winners.

Unlike the Giants, the 49ers will catch a break this season: They face the easiest projected schedule of any team. While there’s always skepticism about strength of schedule metrics and how good they are at projecting real schedule difficulty, consider that the easiest schedule before the 2024 season belonged to the Falcons, who finished with the sixth-easiest slate. The second-easiest schedule projection belonged to the Chargers, who actually ended up playing the softest schedule and rode it to the postseason. I wouldn’t be confident that the 49ers will face the easiest schedule solely because of the FPI’s projection, but I’d be confident they’ll face a relatively easy run of opponents.

There also are reasons to be nervous. Facing a cap crunch in light of the Purdy extension and realistically reconsidering their roster construction after a disappointing campaign, the 49ers lost eight players in free agency who signed with opposing teams for salaries of $10 million or more, the most of any team, while also trading Deebo Samuel to the Commanders. Their most expensive addition is blocking tight end Luke Farrell, who signed a three-year, $15.8 million deal. With so much missing draft capital from the McCaffrey and Trey Lance trades, the 49ers might not have the young talent to fill in those gaps on the roster.

And yet, looking at the players who left, it’s difficult to say many critical players on their roster walked out the door. Javon Hargrave and Dre Greenlaw missed virtually all of the 2024 season. Floyd was a solid pass rusher, but his absence is at a position of strength. Jaylon Moore was the team’s swing tackle. Talanoa Hufanga was excellent in 2022, but injuries have limited him since that breakout season. Losing Aaron Banks and Charvarius Ward will hurt. But some of these losses aren’t as significant as they might seem on paper.

The biggest add the 49ers made this offseason, instead, might be a member of the coaching staff. New defensive coordinator Robert Saleh wasn’t able to coax the Jets into contending for a title as their coach, but he did an excellent job of developing talent in his previous stints in San Francisco and New York, and it might be telling that the Jets’ defense collapsed once the organization fired him. If the 49ers end up surprising and returning to their playoff form, it likely will be because Saleh was able to get more out of Bryce Huff, Dee Winters and Renardo Green than we expect. The Niners already are battling plenty of injuries in camp, and there’s not as much talent here as there was in 2022 or 2023, but I would expect them to be back in the postseason.

Record in 2024: 4-13
Point differential in 2024: minus-125
2024 record in games decided by seven or fewer points: 3-4
Projected strength of schedule, via ESPN’s FPI: 12th toughest in NFL

For all the numbers I can throw at you (and we’ll get to them in a minute), the simplest way for a team to improve its record overnight is to upgrade at the two most important positions. The Raiders went from Aidan O’Connell and Gardner Minshew at quarterback to Geno Smith, and they replaced Antonio Pierce with former Seahawks and Patriots coach Pete Carroll. Swapping out overmatched, replacement-level options (or worse) with solid veterans isn’t the sort of move that inspires Super Bowl aspirations, but it does raise the Raiders’ floor, where there hadn’t been competent management since the Jack Del Rio and Reggie McKenzie era nearly a decade ago.

Over the past three seasons, with the Raiders cycling through coaches and quarterbacks while posting losing records, their various signal-callers combined to rank 26th in Total QBR. The Seahawks, with Smith starting 49 of 51 possible games over that span, ranked 12th.

While a run of interceptions dropped Smith to 21st in QBR last season, the 34-year-old is one of the league’s most accurate quarterbacks. He had the second-best off-target rate of any passer last season, trailing Joe Burrow by a tenth of a percentage point. The Raiders’ quarterbacks combined to rank 26th. Smith ranked fifth in precise pass rate, measuring how often he hit his receivers in stride with easily catchable balls. Las Vegas quarterbacks ranked 25th. There are going to be far more viable opportunities for pass catchers Brock Bowers and Jakobi Meyers this season.

While Carroll’s defenses faded by the end of his time in Seattle, the new brain trust of Carroll and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly should excite Raiders fans. Kelly was overmatched by the time he left the NFL as a head coach after the 2016 season, but the time he spent in college revitalized his scheme, which has more wrinkles and answers to defensive problems, especially on the ground, than it did in San Francisco. I’m not sure Ashton Jeanty was the best value pick of the entire draft, but the Raiders were giving backs Alexander Mattison, Ameer Abdullah and Zamir White the majority of the carries last season; Jeanty is a major upgrade on what was the weakest spot on the roster.

There are two numbers I’d use as strong indicators for the Raiders to improve. One is their turnover margin, which wasn’t good. Their minus-16 mark ranked tied for 31st, as only the Browns (minus-22) were worse. Teams with terrible turnover margins often regress back toward the mean the following season.

Since 1990, adjusting for the 17-game schedule, there have been 42 teams that posted a turnover margin in the minus-20 to minus-15 range. The following season, their turnover margin was collectively plus-2; in other words, they were almost exactly league average. Those teams improved their win total by an average of 2.5 victories per 17 games.

As I mentioned when talking about the Commanders last season, merely picking the team that has the league’s worst turnover margin to make a major leap forward is a good way to be right. I’m not comfortable picking a Cleveland team to improve — they might already be looking to 2026 — but I’m more optimistic about the Raiders and the Titans, the latter of whom also were a candidate to end up in this column.

The other number I’ll use as an indicator for the Raiders: an almost pathological inability to recover fumbles. Despite being coached by a former linebacker, the Raiders couldn’t fall on the football to save their lives (or their season). They picked up just eight of the 33 fumbles in their games, yielding a paltry recovery rate of 24.2%. That’s the second-worst mark for any team in any season going back to 1991, ahead of only the 2011 Steelers (24.1%).

There simply aren’t many teams as unlucky as the 2024 Raiders here. But even if we include the 30 teams since 1991 that recovered no more than 35% of the fumbles in their games, I can project improvement: Those teams recovered 51.6% of the fumbles in their collective games the following season, and their record improved by two wins per 17 games.

Does all of that add up to a Commanders-esque run into the postseason? Probably not. The concerns I’ve raised about the Raiders being stuffed with bad draft picks and ill-advised trades during the Jon Gruden and Josh McDaniels eras still apply, and most of those players are no longer on the roster. The Raiders still have Maxx Crosby, and they imported plenty of veterans to eat snaps on the defensive side of the ball; but even if they project to improve, asking for the D to turn into a top-10 unit would be a lot. There weren’t many changes on offense besides the addition of Smith, so there’s not the same sort of wholesale movement on that side of the ball.

The bigger problem is the roadblock ahead of the Raiders in the AFC West, where the Chiefs, Broncos and Chargers all made it to the postseason and all project to be good again. The Commanders benefited from facing the league’s third-easiest schedule a year ago, going 11-1 against teams that ended up missing the playoffs. Las Vegas will face a tougher slate, and that probably caps its ceiling at somewhere around seven or eight victories. Then again, who thought the Commanders would go from 4-13 to the NFC Championship Game?

Record in 2024: 4-13
Point differential in 2024: minus-135
2024 record in games decided by seven or fewer points: 3-10
Projected strength of schedule, via ESPN’s FPI: Ninth easiest in NFL

It was a 2024 season of losing coin flips for the Jags, who had 13 of their 17 games decided by seven points or fewer. They went 1-3 and were outscored by a combined 86 points in the four games that weren’t one-score contests, which doesn’t exactly speak highly of what former coach Doug Pederson cooked up, but they were unlucky to finish with just four wins.

Sometimes, teams can make a game look closer than it really was by getting a late score in the final minute to bring the final margin of victory within seven, even if they never really had a chance of being in position to tie or take the lead. That wasn’t the case for the Jaguars. In fact, in nine of their 10 close losses, they had the ball with a chance to either hold onto a lead or take one late in the fourth quarter:

• In Week 1, the Jaguars led the Dolphins 17-14 in the fourth quarter. The Dolphins kicked a field goal to tie the game, sacked Trevor Lawrence twice on the ensuing drive, then nailed a 52-yard field goal to win the game as time expired.

• The following week, the Jags got the ball, trailing 16-13 with 1:48 to go, only for Lawrence to take a safety on the next play.

• With a 20-17 lead over the Texans in Week 4, the Jags went three-and-out with four minutes to go with a chance to seal it, then allowed a nine-play drive that ended with a game-winning touchdown pass by C.J. Stroud with 22 seconds left.

• Facing the Packers in Week 8, a Lawrence touchdown pass to Evan Engram tied the game up with 1:48 to go, only for Malik Willis to hit a 51-yard pass to Jayden Reed to set up a game-winning field goal.

• Up against the eventual Super Bowl champion Eagles in Week 9, a late miss by Jake Elliott opened up the door for the Jags to produce a statement victory. Down five with 2:11 to go, Lawrence drove into the red zone, but he then threw an interception to Nakobe Dean in the end zone to end the game.

• In Week 10, the Jaguars led the Vikings 7-6 in the fourth quarter before John Parker Romo made two field goals. Mac Jones turned the ball over three times in the fourth quarter alone, including an interception in the end zone by Cam Bynum with 1:57 to go. The Jags came up with a stop to get the ball back down five, only for Travon Walker to be flagged for unnecessary roughness, allowing Minnesota to kneel out the clock.

• In Week 15, the Jags held a 22-17 lead on the Jets but then allowed a 71-yard touchdown pass to Davante Adams. Jones drove them into field goal range to tie the game, but the defense couldn’t come up with a stop, and Breece Hall scored from a yard out after two more long Adams catches to seal a Jets victory.

• In Week 16 in Las Vegas, the Jags lost a one-point lead early in the fourth quarter. Trailing by five, they appeared to convert a fourth-and-1 to push toward the end zone, only for an 11-yard gain to be called back for holding. Jones completed a pass short of the sticks on the next play to hand the ball back to the Raiders with 52 seconds to go.

• In Week 18, the Jags kicked a field goal to tie the game with 1:49 remaining. After a Colts field goal to start overtime, Jones took a 16-yard sack on third down, then managed a 20-yard completion on fourth-and-22, ending the season with another narrow defeat.

A close loss to the Raiders is one thing, but the Jags were realistically within one drive or even a play or two of beating the Eagles, Packers, Texans and Vikings. There were too many defensive lapses, too many mental mistakes and too many turnovers at the wrong time. They lost four games they led heading into the fourth quarter, the second-most of any team.

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Swagu: Trevor Lawrence must step up this season for Jags

Marcus Spears explains why he would rank Trevor Lawrence as the No. 1 quarterback with the most to prove this season from Dan Orlovsky’s list.

If you were a Jaguars fan who stayed tuned in until that 20-yard pass to Thomas that ended the season, there was something you didn’t get to celebrate very often: turnovers. Jacksonville forced a league-low nine takeaways. Teams can win games on the strength of multi-takeaway performances, and the Jags were a historic outlier there. Ryan Nielsen’s defense had one game with two or more turnovers, just the second time that has happened since 1970. They missed top cornerback Tyson Campbell, who was out five games with injuries, and they didn’t have his new running mate in star rookie Travis Hunter, whose ball skills require no introduction.

The Jags finished with a minus-15 turnover margin, which should open them up to the same sort of takeaway-driven regression toward the mean I mentioned in the Raiders section. They forced only five fumbles on defense, which is tied for the third-lowest total from any team over the past decade. Takeaways help the defense and create short fields for your offense; the Jags had the league’s worst average starting field position when they took over last season, which made life harder for a unit that was prone to making drive-altering mistakes.

Getting a healthy season from Lawrence would help after he had his second half in 2023 and long stretches of 2024 altered by injuries. New coach Liam Coen is a bit of a mystery by head coaching standards, with the Jags representing his fifth move in six years after he went back and forth between the Rams and Kentucky before spending 2024 as the offensive coordinator in Tampa Bay. Coen was able to unlock a long-struggling Bucs run game, which would help make Lawrence’s life much easier. The Jags rank 29th in EPA per play on designed runs over Lawrence’s four pro seasons.

As is often the case, the Jags will benefit from playing in the relatively friendly confines of the AFC South, with Lawrence & Co. set to face the league’s ninth-easiest schedule. Of course, they also played against the league’s eighth-easiest slate a year ago, and we just went over how that went. I’m confident the defensive turnovers will bounce back and that alone should improve them, but their chances of the sort of turnaround they made in 2022 might come down to how quickly their many new faces fit into the lineup and whether Lawrence stays on the field for 17 games.

Record in 2024: 5-12
Point differential in 2024: minus-60
2024 record in games decided by seven or fewer points: 3-7
Projected strength of schedule, via ESPN’s FPI: Fifth toughest in NFL

Things looked fine as the Commanders lined up for that fateful Hail Mary on Oct. 27; the Bears were one play away from winning their fifth consecutive game and hitting 5-2 for the first time since 2020, which happened to be their most recent postseason appearance. While the early results hadn’t been quite what they had hoped on offense, it looked like they were on track to compete for a playoff spot in Caleb Williams’ debut season.

Well, you know what happened next. Tyrique Stevenson decided to go on an excursion to taunt Commanders fans. Noah Brown caught a Hail Mary from Jayden Daniels. The Bears never recovered, as their would-be five-game winning streak turned into a 10-game losing streak. By the time that was done, coach Matt Eberflus and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron were gone, and Williams’ rookie season had been confirmed as a disappointment.

Did the Hail Mary wreck Chicago’s season? It would be difficult to suggest there wasn’t an emotional impact from what was obviously a traumatic loss, but it probably wasn’t the only factor. Through the Commanders game, the Bears had faced the league’s easiest schedule, per FPI. Afterward, they faced the league’s toughest slate of opponents. They weren’t as good as they looked during that (nearly) 5-2 start, and they probably weren’t quite as bad as they seemed during the 1-10 stretch that ended their season.

While the next two games after the Commanders’ defeat yielded disappointing losses to the Cardinals and Patriots, the Bears dealt with some close defeats. In Week 11, leading the Packers by five with 4:17 to go, they allowed a 60-yard pass to Christian Watson and a touchdown shortly thereafter. After taking two sacks, Williams drove them into field goal range, only for the Packers to block a 46-yard kick by Cairo Santos that would have won the game.

The following week, the Bears scored 10 points in the final 22 seconds of regulation to take the Vikings to overtime, won the coin toss, then were forced to punt after a sack. They then allowed conversions from second-and-17, first-and-15 and first-and-20 situations to Sam Darnold and the Minnesota offense, setting up a game-winning field goal. The next week, Williams drove the Bears for two fourth-quarter touchdowns and then got them in field goal range for a game-tying kick against the Lions, only for a Teven Jenkins penalty to knock them out of range and a sack to derail their opportunity. That’s three near-misses against the three other playoff teams in the NFC North.

Enter Ben Johnson, who might be the most-hyped first-time head coach to take over an NFL team in recent league history. He has said all the right things in the months leading up to his first action — he comes from a Lions organization that has done an excellent job of building an organizational culture and managing game situations — but we truly have no idea of what he’ll be as a coach once Sundays come. He could be either the next Kevin O’Connell or the next Adam Gase. Bears fans might suggest that anyone would be better than Eberflus, but it’s probably safer to be optimistic about Johnson as opposed to certain he’ll step in and immediately be an upper-echelon coach.

There’s a simple logic here: Johnson fixes the offense, former Saints defensive coordinator Dennis Allen gets a unit that looked great in the second half of 2023 back on track, and the Bears rocket forward. Obviously, if I’m putting them in this column, I’m willing to believe that’s in the realm of possibilities.

So much depends, though, on a few key contributors. Williams wasn’t able to overcome his own on-field distractions last season and, outside of a couple of games after the Waldron firing, didn’t seem comfortable playing within structure. Can he toe the line between doing what Johnson asks and picking the right moments to abandon the scheme and create magic? A vaunted group of playmakers didn’t live up to expectations last season; can swapping out Keenan Allen for rookies Colston Loveland and Luther Burden III add more explosiveness to the offense?

Much was made of the additions on the interior of the offensive line, which should be much improved, but general manager Ryan Poles didn’t find the plug-and-play left tackle the line needed. As a result, the Bears seem to be cycling through options in camp and hoping one sticks; after looking at Braxton Jones, Ozzy Trapilo and Kiran Amegadjie, there’s a real chance 2024 undrafted free agent Theo Benedet, who didn’t make it onto the field last season, could be the Week 1 starter protecting Williams on the blind side.

On defense, Montez Sweat looked to be the difference-maker the Bears needed up front when he had six sacks in nine games in 2023, but he had only 5.5 sacks and 12 knockdowns while battling lower-leg injuries in 2024. He’ll have more help this season with Dayo Odeyingbo and Grady Jarrett on the line, but is Sweat the No. 1 edge rusher Chicago hoped it was acquiring, or was 2023 an outlier?

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Can the new Bears O-line protect Caleb Williams?

Damien Woody discusses whether the Bears’ offensive line can be effective in protecting Caleb Williams this season.

And in the secondary, the Bears sorely missed safety Jaquan Brisker, who missed the final 12 games of 2024 with a concussion. Over his three NFL seasons, they have allowed a 50.4 Total QBR with their talented safety on the field and a 67.4 mark without him. That’s the difference between being the league’s seventh-best pass defense and its worst over that three-year span.

I’m bringing up all of these players and situations because the case for the Bears improving, really, is on them playing better or being available more often. They were relatively healthy in 2024. They were actually a little lucky on defense, where they were much better on third down than first and second down. They had a positive turnover margin and a solid fumble recovery rate. Outside of their performance in one-score games, many of the numbers I would rely upon as indicators of improvements to come don’t move the needle.

I’m optimistic about Johnson, about Williams turning things around and that the NFC North might not be quite as difficult to crack as it seems based on 2024 records. I’m also being realistic when I say the Bears have both a higher ceiling and a lower floor than most other teams, a dynamic that played out during their hot start and subsequent collapse a year ago.