Predicting the NFL Playoff Team Swaps Before the Season

Every year, when the preseason predictions roll out, it’s traditionally chalk from the pundits—there are around two teams per division that will be in contention for the title or the wild card that you see everywhere, and maybe someone will throw out a wild and crazy take with one that you don’t see very often—we then crucify that opinion!

The reality is that the NFL is an entirely unpredictable reality show —on average, half of the 14 teams that made the postseason last year will not make it this season, including one team that goes from last place to first.

We are all guaranteed to be wrong somehow!

Knowing these parameters, let’s take a look at last year’s postseason field and not only say, “NO PLAYOFFS FOR YOU!” but also swap them out with someone else who could reasonably take their spot, Yankee Swap style.

SWAP 1: Last Year’s Tampa Bay Bucs for this Year’s Atlanta Falcons

This one is absolutely conceivable and a favorite to happen for the honorary, “Well, someone HAS to win the NFC South!” playoff spot. The Bucs won the division with only a 9-8 record and are essentially just running it back, but they’re losing Dave Canales, the OC that unlocked Baker Mayfield and their offensive attack. It’s essentially a net negative with another year of age on their high-end talent.

At the same time, the Falcons have invested everything into righting their wrongs from last year, from paying Kirk Cousins AND signing Michael Penix to unlock their skill position players to overhauling the coaching staff and adding some veterans to their lackluster defense in trading for Matthew Judon and signing Justin Simmons. It’s a feasible one-for-one swap.

SWAP 2: Last Year’s Los Angeles Rams for this Year’s Seattle Seahawks

Last year may have been Sean McVay’s magnum opus from a coaching standpoint despite having already won a Super Bowl. The regression on that roster was all the rage during the preseason, as it was just a battered Matthew Stafford, Cooper Kupp, Aaron Donald, and many guys that Stafford didn’t even know their names at the breakfast hall. They overperformed everyone’s expectations, with Stafford elevating breakout Puka Nacua in Kupp’s absence and becoming a complete and tough team to play.

This season, we’re already looking at potentially more regression. The man that WAS healthy in Kupp’s absence, Nakua, is already injured; Kyren Williams not only took all of the mileage last year but also will apparently now be returning punts (which is a bit scary for someone with his injury history!), and Stafford always HAS to play the warrior card through the beatdowns he takes behind an offensive line that will be shifting Steve Avila from guard to center and has an injured Jonah Jackson. Oh, yeah, and there’s the matter of replacing arguably the most impactful player of the last decade, Aaron Donald, in retirement.

The depth is dwindling, which could lead to a possible dip in performance for a team that was already overperforming last year.

If they were to be swapped, the arrow points up within the division for the Seahawks. Ravens defensive coordinator-turned-youngest head coach in the NFL, Mike Macdonald, was lauded for being able to stop the Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay-style offenses in Baltimore. If they have any kind of pass rush to fix the defense, the offense on the other side of the ball with innovative OC Ryan Grubb from Washington is going to make Geno maximize what was an underperforming core last year. The NFC West could be shaping up to be one of the most loaded offensive divisions in football in the same vein as the old-school “Pac-12 after dark” college games out west. 

SWAP 3: Last Year’s Pittsburgh Steelers for this Year’s Cincinnati Bengals

Mike Tomlin’s calling card has been that he’s never had any season below .500, and even getting moribund offensive production last year from Mason Rudolph and Kenny Pickett, they still managed to squeak into the postseason playing some of the ugliest rust belt football possible. The quarterback room is already in a position to figure out who the lesser of the two evils is: Russell Wilson, the sunk-cost veteran from Denver, or Justin Fields, the sunk-cost flier from Chicago. With how loaded the AFC is now, anything less than a Hall of Fame defense has Tomlin and the Steelers to finally have that streak come to an end.

It feels like cheating to have the Bengals as the representative of the worst-to-first candidate because of being last due to Joe Burrow’s injury, but Burrow has proven that when he’s healthy, it doesn’t really matter circumstantially what the situation is around him as long as he had Ja’Marr Chase. Assuming Chase ends his holdout and plays, Tee Higgins and Sam Hubbard will still be there despite their trade requests, and they still feel like they’re in win-now mode when Joe is cool and in his prime and at least takes a spot out of the competitive AFC North.

SWAP 4: Last Year’s Miami Dolphins for this Year’s New York Jets

The Dolphins have officially entered “we’ll believe it when we see it in the postseason” territory. It’s a combination of things: they ran up the score on bad teams with 16-6 records against teams above .500 and lost 6 in a row vs. winning records while wearing tropical uniforms and losing in one of the coldest games in NFL postseason history. The stereotypes write themselves for a flashy team built on schemes and speed. While Mike McDaniel has been able to maximize Tua and all of the skill positions around him that you trust to put up points, the offensive and defensive lines in the trenches are already hampered without Phillips and Chubb. Building a team this way is dangerous, so there could easily be a path where they’re pushed out by a team built more on core if someone loses a step.

It’s odd believing anything could go right for the New York Jets. Still, they’re continuing to operate from the standpoint of Super Bowl or bust with the most unpredictable alien in football, Aaron Rodgers. He’s been in the news for many non-football-related reasons, but when he won back-to-back MVPs in Green Bay, it was when he was admittingly going on drug trips, right? The pieces they added are veterans that are addressing every hole possible in case the nightmare scenario with Rodgers coming off a brutal injury for a 40-year-old happens again because they have a top-5 defense for him on the other side of the ball. Anything less than success on the field, with the face of the franchise off the field being a circus, is going to be a failure.

SWAP 5: Last Year’s Cleveland Browns for this Year’s Indianapolis Colts

The Cleveland Browns had everything go against them last year- 5 different quarterbacks being used (the best one being 40-year-old Joe Flacco off the couch), an unreal amount of injuries to the offensive line, and Nick Chubb suffering a season-ending injury after wanting to honor Jim Brown with a rushing record. Kevin Stefanski

certainly earned that coach of the year with a historic defense. Still, it feels like it could get very awkward this season with Deshaun Watson coming back. Watson is now a dead cap hit of $72.9 million in 2025 because while they gave up and paid a man with off-the-field issues more money than ever conceived, he also has been one of their worst quarterbacks throughout the shuffle since his arrival with the highest rate of incompletions due to inaccuracy (43.9%). Unless the defense goes Hall of Fame again, it could get ugly and have an elephant in the room, too.

The case for the Colts is the ceiling of Anthony Richardson. He may have played fewer games at quarterback than in two high school seasons and left every game he played in last season early, but the ceiling around his Superman physique and what we DID see is what could take them over the top. We already saw a blast of an offensive scheme last season in Indy built with GARDNER MINSHEW at quarterback. While the secondary is a major question mark, the Colts’ offense could make them a surprise playoff team if Richardson is on the field for the majority of the season because of our dream-casting of him as a main character of the season.

SWAP 6: Last Year’s Dallas Cowboys for this year’s Chicago Bears

PHOTO: Daniel Bartel/Imagn Images

The “same old Cowboys” narrative may come to a halt this year. Usually, the route has been: draft well, pay the held-out stars after Jerry Jones finally gives in, and have an early exit after an impressive regular season. This year, the postseason entirely might be a question mark since it’s truly just an unpaid Dak throwing to a now-paid Ceedee Lamb with an unaddressed running back and offensive line in the offseason and a defense undergoing a coordinator change. McCarthy already has a hot seat in one of the most pressure-cooker environments without having a paid quarterback, which feels like it’s prime for instability for a team that purely needs to reevaluate their allocations of resources.

The Bears are, in a way, bizarro Cowboys- they have a core built around everyone, with the only question being the rookie quarterback, but Caleb Williams has already been heralded as the most can’t-miss #1 prospect in years. The defense they’re bringing back with a defensive-minded coach in Eberflus will get a full year of Montez Sweat with what’s one of the youngest units in football; Rome Odunze, Keenan Allen, DJ Moore, and D’Andre Swift are a dealer’s choice of weapons to make life easier for Caleb, and the only difference between them and taking a spot in the NFC would be that the tough NFC North is too top-heavy and Williams isn’t schemed up well to adjust to the learning curve. They’re the most mystery box team in the NFL.

SWAP 7: Last Year’s Buffalo Bills for this Year’s Los Angeles Chargers

The Bills continue to get Mahomes’d year after year, with the tragic hero narrative growing for Josh Allen and cementing him in Buffalo history until he finally avenges the broken franchise. While there’s a feeling of desperation to save the prince that was promised in upstate New York, and you’ll never count on his will to win out, there has never been a situation where more has been put on his shoulders from a new skill position group that got rid of Stefon Diggs to a defense that suffered another Matt Milano injury. James Cook came alive last season with the OC change, but the Bills are a lot of hoping Josh Allen can take them over the top. If anything were to get in that way, they could go from 2 seed to missing out in a crowded AFC.

From one cursed franchise to another, the Chargers are looking to get over those similar demons. If that were to occur in this situation, it’s that you believe in Jim Harbaugh as a program-builder. We’ve seen him turn every program around he’s been at, and one could make the argument that a healthy Justin Herbert is the most talented pure arm he’s ever had. Still, he’ll have to be the identity of the team with a ground-and-pound game that won him a championship at Michigan with the group of receivers Herbert will be throwing to.

The Chargers’ belief in Harbaugh, Herbert’s arm and health, and scheming up the top-end talent on their defense to make teams play a purely uncomfortable style would be the case for them finally quitting Charger-ing.

PHOTO: Daniel Bartel/Imagn Images