For every NFL team, training camp is all about hope. For a fortunate few, the hope is for a Super Bowl berth. For most teams, the hope is that the combination of established talent and new additions will provide a path to contention. And for the guys at the bottom, the hope is that a few positives can be strung together.
Coming into the 2019 training camps, here’s how we see all 32 NFL teams:
32. Miami Dolphins
No team is going to be honest when they’re tanking for the future. It’s always a “rebuild” when it’s actually a tank job, and it’s always a “retool” when it’s a rebuild. So, when the Dolphins tell you they’re rebuilding, act accordingly. The trade for Josh Rosen gives new head coach Brian Flowers and offensive coordinator Chad Finn a potential franchise quarterback, the receiver corps is better than average, the offensive line isn’t the NFL’s worst … but it’s tough to look at the defense and see anything but a need for from-the-studs architecture. Dolphins fans can only hope that the new group know what they’re doing; with just one winning season this decade, it’s been far too long since this franchise has done anything but move from reset to reset.
31. Arizona Cardinals
It could be argued that the 2018 Cardinals were the worst-coached NFL team of the last decade, especially on offense, where former quarterback Josh Rosen was doomed before he ever hit the field. Now with new head coach Kliff Kingsbury and first-overall pick Kyler Murray at quarterback, the hope is that these Cardinals will parlay considerable skill position talent on offense, and a defense that was better than it looked last season, into something resembling respectability. The coaching bar can’t be set much lower than it was, which we suppose is a good sign.
30. New York Giants
We’ll give Giants general manager Dave Gettleman this much — the guy knows what he wants, and he has no trouble expressing it. He looked pretty smart when he took running back Saquon Barkley with the second overall pick in the 2018 draft, and Barkley proved to be a massive addition right away. But everything from the Odell Beckham Jr. trade to the selection of Duke quarterback Daniel Jones in the first round smacked of Gettleman’s most dangerous tendency — to talk himself into things that may or may not be true. In the short term, the Giants will pay for that on the field.
29. Denver Broncos
John Elway’s insistence that Joe Flacco is in the prime of his career might be the weirdest quarterback decision he’s made in an executive career peppered with them. Flacco has been average at best over the last four seasons, so banking things on his arm as rookie Drew Lock gets up to speed is an interesting decision. Any improvement you see from new head coach Vic Fangio will likely be on defense; Fangio is a defensive genius, and that side of the ball is stacked. In the meantime, the Broncos will have to hope that Lock is the quarterback Elway has been waiting to get right all along.
28. Oakland Raiders
Last year marked Jon Gruden’s return to coaching after a long stretch off. The Raiders’ 4-12 season was about Gruden getting a sense of his roster and trading his two best players (Amari Cooper and Khalil Mack) to the Cowboys and Bears for first-round picks. Now that those picks have been spent, it’s all on Gruden to make it all work. Pass rusher Clelin Ferrell, running back Josh Jacobs and safety Jonathan Abram all have talent, but unless they hit big in big ways out of the gate, and the Antonio Brown-led receiver corps takes off as expected, the focus will still be on Derek Carr’s limitations, a highly questionable offensive line and a front seven struggling to get pressure on opposing quarterbacks.
27. Cincinnati Bengals
Marvin Lewis will probably never get the credit he deserves for transforming the Bengals from one of the worst-run organizations in the NFL to a team with consistent credibility. That’s what happens when you coach a team for 16 seasons and you never win a playoff game. Lewis was replaced by Zac Taylor, the former Sean McVay assistant who brings expansive ideas to an offense that will struggle to execute them. The offensive line is a real problem, especially after tackle Jonah Williams suffered a season-ending shoulder injury before the first-rounder from Alabama could get his NFL career going. Andy Dalton’s ceiling is made of concrete, and while the hope is that Taylor can do for Dalton what Taylor and McVay did for Jared Goff, it’s a big ask when the front five has this many question marks.
26. New York Jets
Few other teams have spent more money to acquire less impressive talent than the Jets have over the last few years, and no team has had more salary cap purges as a result. Ownership finally got rid of general manager Mike Maccagnan as a result, but what’s left for head coach Adam Gase to deal with? Sam Darnold came on well at the end of the season, with six touchdowns and one interception in December. Le’Veon Bell brings all kinds of wrinkles to the offense, and new GM Joe Douglas is a highly regarded personnel man who can do good things if everyone gets on the same page. In the meantime, Jets fans will have to be satisfied with the occasional inspiring in-game moment and the promise of a brighter future. It’s a familiar refrain, but might actually pan out this time.
25. Washington Redskins
If this isn’t the push year for Jay Gruden, its hard to know what might cause impatience in Washington’s legendarily impatient front office. Gruden hasn’t taken the team to the playoffs since 2016, and the Redskins’ 9-7 mark that year was his only winning record without a tie over five seasons. Gruden cast Robert Griffin III aside, got the most he could out of Kirk Cousins, and tried to do the same with Alex Smith before Smith’s gruesome leg injury. Now he has first-round quarterback Dwayne Haskins to develop. Haskins’ targets don’t inspire fear in defenses, running back Derrius Guice’s future is still uncertain, and the defense is decent enough. But this could be another tough season — and possibly the last season — for Gruden in the nation’s capital.
24. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
We all know that the addition of Bruce Arians as head coach should be good news for Jameis Winston and his receivers — Arians is one of the most astute offensive minds of his generation, especially when it comes to the passing game. But the real improvement needs to come from new defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, who will be charged with taking what may have been the league’s least-effective defense in 2018 and getting it to do, well, anything good. Swapping Gerald McCoy for Ndamukong Suh was an interesting move, but when Bowles calls his multiple and interesting defenses, his biggest challenge will be with the talent he has — or doesn’t have — in the secondary.
23. Detroit Lions
This offseason, head coach Matt Patricia could really bring in his kinds of players, and the front office gave position-leading money to former Patriots pas -rusher Trey Flowers and ex-Seahawks slot defender Justin Coleman as a result. Big additions to be sure, and they’ll ostensibly allow the former Patriots defensive coordinator to run the defense he wants. The offense should be in check from a talent perspective, especially with the addition of first-round tight end T.J. Hockenson, so any improvement over last year’s 6-10 mark will be on Patricia’s ability to bring that defense out of uncertainty.
22. Buffalo Bills
Give the Bills credit — they did a lot in the offseason to improve over last year’s 6-10 mark as they worked through serious salary cap issues. They may have the best player in the draft in Ed Oliver, and they made a ton of smart signings in free agency. Mitch Morse, John Brown, Cole Beasley and Ty Nsekhe should all make life easier for quarterback Josh Allen. But this is still a quarterback-driven league, and though Allen had his moments in his rookie season (more as a runner than a thrower at times), there’s still a lot of work to be done. The Bills will be fun to watch in 2019, but true contention is on the Allen developmental timeline.
21. Houston Texans
The Texans lost a lot of secondary talent in free agency, and the offensive line doesn’t look a lot better than the one that made Deshaun Watson the most pressured quarterback in the NFL last season. That’s the bad news. The good news? The defensive front is still outstanding, DeAndre Hopkins is the best receiver in football, and when he’s allowed to remain upright for more than 1.3 seconds after the snap, Watson is a very good player. But when it comes to a return to the playoffs, the rough spots could drag the franchise down a bit from last year’s 11-5 mark, though not quite to 2017’s 4-12 mark.
20. San Francisco 49ers
This is the third season together for head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch, and in the first two years, the two have combined to present more questions than they’ve answered. Last year was supposed to be the big year, of course, as the acquisition of Jimmy Garoppolo ostensibly gave Shanahan the quarterback he needed to run his brilliant offense. But even before Garoppolo’s torn ACL, he didn’t always look as sharp as one would have liked. Trading for Dee Ford and drafting Nick Bosa will help the pass rush, but the real need here is for the defense to rack up more than the two interceptions it managed last season.
19. Pittsburgh Steelers
This has the feel of 2012 and 2013 for the Steelers, when they limped along at 8-8 in both seasons as a needed rebuild happened. The loss of Antonio Brown is an obvious and major hit to the offense, though JuJu Smith-Schuster is a fine wide receiver. Running back James Conner doesn’t have Le’Veon Bell’s wide skill set, but he proved able as Bell held out for the entire season. Bell’s now a Jet all the way, which means that the Steelers are trotting out No. 2 players at two top skill positions to replace two No. 1 guys. That would be OK if the defense were at a certain level, but despite a front seven more than capable of getting after the quarterback, a secondary unable to stop opposing offenses consistently might be Pittsburgh’s Achilles’ heel for the second straight year.
18. Carolina Panthers
Because the Panthers finished the 2018 season 7-9, it’s hard to remember that they started off 6-2 and appeared to have the look of a division winner before Cam Newton’s injuries caught up to him. Things really fell apart in December, when Newton threw just two touchdown passes to six interceptions and the team went 1-4. If Newton can replicate his first three months of the 2018 season, that will help, one hopes for a better offensive line and pass rush after off-season moves, and the addition of Gerald McCoy makes things interesting along the defensive line, but there’s more to that slow finish than Newton’s health.
17. Seattle Seahawks
Pete Carroll and John Schneider have avoided the term “rebuild” over the last couple of years, preferring to term what they’ve done to Seattle’s roster as a “retool.” But with the retirement of Doug Baldwin and Earl Thomas exiting as the last member of the Legion of Boom, there’s no doubt about the architecture now. This is Russell Wilson’s team in a sense — the four-year, $140 million contact extension Wilson signed in April made that clear — but philosophically, Carroll and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer want a risk-averse offense at fundamental odds with Wilson’s brilliance outside of structure. Add that to a defense that is still under construction, and this team resembles the Seahawks of the early Carroll/Schneider era before everything came together — we might be a year or so away from seeing what they can really be.
16. Dallas Cowboys
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the 2019 Cowboys is the fact that their two most prominent offensive players — quarterback Dak Prescott and running back Ezekiel Elliott — are the subjects of considerable thought regarding their overall value as new contacts may come … or not. The promotion of Kellen Moore from quarterbacks coach to offensive coordinator indicates what is easy to see on the field — the offense that carries both players is in need of expansion. The defense is better than average from front to back, and the offensive line should see an uptick in performance if last year’s health issues are in the past, but this is now a team that will go as far as Prescott, Elliott, and perhaps most prominently Moore, will take it.
15. Minnesota Vikings
The Vikings have one of the best defenses in the NFL. They have a rushing attack on the rise. And in Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs, they have one of the league’s best receiver duos. They also have Kirk Cousins at quarterback, which means that everything else had better work at its top level if the Vikings are to accomplish what they can with everything else on the roster. Winning a Super Bowl is possible with a limited quarterback, even in the modern era, but what’s around him had best be transcendent. It’s possible for Mike Zimmer’s team, but Cousins’ limitations in field-reading, arm strength, and ability to play efficiently outside of structure present barriers Zimmer and his staff will simply have to work around.
14. Tennessee Titans
Over the last three seasons, the Titans have seemed like the team hanging around, waiting for definition. They’ve gone 9-7 in each of those three seasons, making the playoffs in 2017 at the end of Mike Mularkey’s brief “Exotic Smashouth” era. Last season, they finished 20th overall in Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted efficiency metrics — 22nd on offense, 19th on defense, 13th on special teams. They have a handful of truly great players — Derrick Henry, Jurrell Casey and Kevin Byard. They have a quarterback, Marcus Mariota, who’s had one great statistical season (2016) in a four-year career, and average performances aside. An improved receiver corps should help, and there’s nothing specifically wrong with this team. The question is, when are the Titans going to crawl out of the average and show their true potential?
13. Cleveland Browns
Every NFL season has one team that looks amazing on paper but can’t quite make it happen on the field. It will be up to former offensive coordinator and new head coach Freddie Kitchens to take the Browns out of that spot in 2019. There’s no doubt about the talent throughout the roster; outside of an offensive line with a couple weak spots, it could be argued that Cleveland has top-10 position groups throughout. Baker Mayfield is coming off a record-breaking rookie season, the addition of Odell Beckham Jr. could mesh well with Kitchens’ concepts, and the defense has more talent than it did last season. The potential is there for double-digit wins for this franchise for the first time since 2007, and for sustainable success throughout if everything holds the way it should. Either way, the Browns won’t be boring.
12. Jacksonville Jaguars
Adding Nick Foles to a great power running game and a top-three defense seems like a recipe for success in the wake of the Blake Bortles era … if the power running game is great and the defense is a top-three defense. But both aspects of the Jaguars’ attack regressed in 2018, especially a defense that was lights-out in 2017 but struggled with communication and placement issues last season. Having Foles will help a lot, but if everything else doesn’t fall into place, Jacksonville’s new quarterback could be looking at the middle of the pack in a way he hasn’t seen in a long time.
11. Atlanta Falcons
The Falcons gave big-money deals to defensive stars Grady Jarrett and Deion Jones this offseason, and if Jones is able to return for a fully healthy season, Atlanta’s defense can reverse the downturn in production it suffered in his absence. A bunch of coaching changes, an iffy offensive line, and a secondary very much under construction mitigates Matt Ryan’s potential and the team’s skill position talent to a point, but a lot will have to go right for the Falcons to make a deep playoff run. New offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter, mercifully brought in to replace Steve Sarkisian, should bring a lot of improvement.
10. Chicago Bears
In most possible ways, the Bears have the look of a Super Bowl hopeful. Matt Nagy is a very creative offensive coach whose schemes play out well on the field. The defense is stacked from front to back, though we don’t know what the loss of former defensive coordinator Vic Fangio will do to that group. Chuck Pagano is an able replacement, but Fangio matched his schemes to that personnel in ways that will be tough to top. Mitchell Trubisky improved considerably in his second NFL season, and if he can keep that up under Nagy’s tutelage, watch out for this team.
9. Baltimore Ravens
The only questions about Baltimore is how things will work out when Lamar Jackson needs to throw the ball at a high-volume rate, and how the coaching staff will handle a defensive exodus in free agency. Per Football Outsiders, the Ravens went radically up in run percentage in every possible situation when the switch was made from Joe Flacco to Jackson, and while that worked a lot of the time, most Super Bowl teams have that moment where the quarterback needs to take over. The losses of Terrell Suggs, C.J. Mosley, Za’Darius Smith and Eric Weddle are serious hits, and while the addition of Earl Thomas is nice, issues now range from overall pass rush to linebacker range. This is still a top-three secondary, and could be even more if Thomas stays healthy, but it’ll take some kind of coaching to make up for the defensive losses, and to bring Jackson forward in advancement to the point where he’s ready for the “crux of the biscuit” moment when it comes.
8. Green Bay Packers
Two things needed to happen for the Packers to regain relevance and get back to the playoffs for the first time since 2016: They needed a creative offensive coach to give Aaron Rodgers more opportunities to make big plays in structure, and they needed a major overhaul on defense. Check and check. Matt LaFleur will have his hands full keeping Rodgers within any structure, but he’ll be a marked improvement over Mike McCarthy. Perhaps more importantly, the defensive overhaul happened with free agents Preston Smith, Za;Darius Smith and Adrian Amos, and draft picks Rashan Gary, Darnell Savage and underrated defensive tackle Kingley Keke. Now, if Rodgers can stay healthy, and he merges with his new coach, the Packers could be a serious threat into the postseason.
7. New England Patriots
No Gronk? No problem. Tom Brady turning 42? No problem. Losing defensive end Trey Flowers in free agency? No problem at all. Brady and Belichick still rule the league until further notice, and until one or both of them hit the retirement trail, that’s not going to change. Still, Rob Gronkowski’s absence puts a big hole in the passing game — the hope is that first-round receiver N’Keal Harry can take up some of the slack as a contested-catch receiver. Despite his age, Brady is still getting it done at a fairly high level. And, the Pats responded to the loss of Flowers to the Lions by doing the most Patriots thing possible — they traded for veteran defensive end Michael Bennett for a relative pittance, surely with the knowledge that Bennett and Flowers had the same number of total pressures (78). So, while the fancy thing to do will be to start throwing dirt on this team, especially if they get off to a slow start, we all know how this book ends.
6. Philadelphia Eagles
The defending Super Bowl champs were scalded by rotten injury luck in 2018 and still got back to the playoffs at 9-7. With even a pedestrian injury situation, they’ll be set to contend once again … as long as one of the injuries doesn’t happen to quarterback Carson Wentz, who received a massive contract extension in the offseason despite missing the ends of the last two seasons with various maladies. With backup Nick Foles off to Jacksonville, the floor is a little shakier should the franchise QB go down again.
5. Indianapolis Colts
Since he took the job in 2017, Colts general manager Chris Ballard has built a potential title contender the way it should be done — through excellent drafts and a measured approach to free agency. Yes, it helps to have Andrew Luck, but Ballard’s predecessor, Ryan Grigson, had that particular asset and squandered it. Now, this Colts team is as loaded as any, and could well push for a Super Bowl berth. Defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus is one of the game’s brightest minds on the way up, and it’s his squad that could make the difference — especially in the secondary.
4. Los Angeles Rams
When Sean McVay admitted that he was outcoached in Super Bowl LIII, it took a bit of the shine off the NFL’s wunderkind … or did it? Perhaps the 13-3 loss did more to expose Jared Goff as a quarterback who is very much a product of McVay’s system, and tends to regress mightily outside that construct. In either case, one imagines a Rams team eager to build on their 13-3 regular-season record as much as they might obsess over the final score. They may still be the team to beat in the NFC West, but attrition along the offensive line and Todd Gurley’s murky injury situation won’t help Goff, and the loss of Ndamukong Suh might hurt the line more than people think. Still, this is an all-in team with a lot of talent, and they could find their way back to the big game if everything breaks right and Goff continues to develop.
3. Los Angeles Chargers
If the Saints aren’t the NFL’s most complete team, the Chargers might be. Oh, what fun it is to live in the bandbox the AFC West has become at the top, with the Chiefs and Chargers volleying in the stratosphere, and the Broncos and Raiders trying to figure it out. Not only does Anthony Lynn’s team have a redefined Philip Rivers and talent all over the offensive roster, they also have a defense with two stellar pass rushers in Joey Bosa and Melvin Gordon, along with a secondary that was already ridiculously talented, and now looks to be even more so with the addition of former Delaware safety Nasir Adderley.
2. Kansas City Chiefs
The real concern about the Chiefs shouldn’t be Patrick Mahomes’ supposedly inevitable regression. Even if Mahomes takes a backslide, he’ll be doing so from a season in which he threw 53 touchdown passes at age 23. Losing Kareem Hunt was a blow to the offense, but Tyreek Hill has been cleared by the NFL. And Andy Reid has proved the ability to create concepts that elevate Mahomes’ otherworldly gifts to the highest possible order. The only thing keeping Reid’s team from the Super Bowl is a defense that wobbled all year and absolutely fell apart against the Patriots in the AFC championship game. New defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo will make a differnece, as will the addition of ex-Seahawks pass rusher Frank Clark via trade. Emmanuel Ogbah, Tyrann Mathieu and Alex Okafor could also help pump this defense into the NFL’s middle, and that might be all the Chiefs need to pick up their first Super Bowl win since the 1969 season.
1. New Orleans Saints
The Saints wasted a few of Drew Brees’ prime years with horrible defenses that led to 7-9 seasons despite their quarterback’s brilliance, but that’s turned around in the last two seasons, as the team has actually built a defense capable of carrying Brees to a point — not that he needs it just yet. The quarterback is as ruthlessly efficient as ever, through a late-season decline that was probably injury-related should be cause for some concern. And while the defense isn’t let good enough to drag the offense to a Super Bowl in 2015 Denver Broncos fashion, that’s not needed. This is probably the most complete team in football, a team that could have seen either of the last two Super Bowls were it not for some absolutely horrible situational luck in the playoffs. This could be the year that all changes and Brees picks up his second Lombardi Trophy.
