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The Super Bowl is now in the rearview mirror, and the Seattle Seahawks have been crowned champions for the 2025 season.

Now, the battle begins in earnest to dethrone them. All across the league this offseason, teams will make changes with an eye on the idea that they could be the ones hoisting the Lombardi Trophy at this time next year. 

The process has already started with the coaching carousel, with 10 teams swapping out their head coach and many more making changes at either offensive or defensive coordinator. But the time for change is not nearly done. Free agency will begin in just a few short weeks, and not long after that will be the NFL Draft. And teams can of course make trades at any time in order to improve their rosters in the meantime.

With all those avenues for improvement, there are certainly going to be some teams that get better next year. (By contrast, there will necessarily be some teams that get worse.) That's why we're here today: to take a look at some of the teams that have an opportunity to improve next year, for one reason or another. 

Las Vegas Raiders

The Raiders should be significantly better in 2026 than they were in 2025, even if only because they can't possibly get worse. They went just 3-14 this past season, checking in with the league's worst offense in a variety of metrics and one of its worst defenses as well. Simply put, they weren't good at anything. And it's really hard to be bad at everything two seasons in a row. (Even if it has been done before.)

But there are also reasons beyond "it can't get worse" to believe that they'll get better. The Raiders should get a coaching upgrade in the form of Klint Kubiak, who will take the place of the deposed Pete Carroll. Kubiak, as we saw during the Seahawks' run to the Super Bowl, is one of the best offensive designers and play callers in the NFL, and he'll put players in position to succeed on that side of the ball. Players like Brock Bowers and Ashton Jeanty will be in much more favorable situations than they were this past year.

The Raiders also have the second-most available cap space in the NFL with over $91 million to spend, according to Over the Cap, and they have not just the No. 1 overall pick in the draft (which they are widely expected to use on Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza) but the third-most overall draft capital in the league. All of that should combine to make the Raiders at least a few games better in 2026. They're almost surely not going to go from worst-to-first like the Patriots did, but they could 

Tennessee Titans

Tennessee was probably on lists like this last year for a lot of the same reasons that the Raiders are now, including having the No. 1 overall pick. But there are other factors conspiring to put the Titans in better position this year than they were a year ago. 

The Titans still have the fifth-most draft capital in the league heading into the 2026 NFL Draft, and they also have more cap space than any team in football. According to Over the Cap, they have over $104 million to spend this offseason, and we saw just this past year how having that much money to spend can lead to significant improvements. The Titans need to fill a lot of holes on their roster, but they have plenty of different ways to do that this year.

They should also get an upgrade in the coaching department. Robert Saleh's tenure as the head coach in New York didn't go particularly well, but that was almost entirely due to the disaster-level situation the team had at quarterback. His defenses were the best in the league during his time as the head coach. He should immediately improve Tennessee on that side of the ball. 

Cam Ward also showed flashes during his rookie season that he could be a high-level quarterback despite the awful infrastructure surrounding him. If Brian Daboll puts him in better position to succeed and the team upgrades the supporting cast, the offense should improve as well. 

Baltimore Ravens

The Ravens are here largely for one reason: Lamar Jackson should be healthier in 2026 than he was in 2025. 

Jackson only missed four games this year, but he was clearly not at full strength in the nine games he played following his return from injury. A healthy version of Jackson does not rush only 46 times for 183 yards and one touchdown across a nine-game sample size. That's just not the type of player he is. (When healthy in the previous two seasons, Jackson averaged 6.0 rushing attempts for 52.6 yards per game compared with 5.1 attempts for 20.3 yards in the second half of this season.)

If Jackson is on the field and healthy, the Ravens are going to win more games than they did this year. They went 25-8 in his 33 starts across the previous two seasons, compared with just 6-7 this year. And their offense was one of the best in the NFL in 2023 and 2024, while it was average at best for much of this past season.

The Ravens are also getting a defensive coaching upgrade with the return of Jesse Minter to the fold. Zach Orr's defense left much to be desired this past season, but Minter has shown that he can build really good units even without the benefit of elite talent, so he should be able to get more out of his charges on that side of the ball. 

Kansas City Chiefs

This one is pretty simple: The Chiefs won 11 or more games in each of Patrick Mahomes' first seven seasons as the starter under center and had finished above .500 every year since 2012 before slumping all the way to 6-11 this year. 

But that 6-11 record is misleading. Kansas City had the point differential of a 9.5-win team, per Pro-Football-Reference, but won only six games thanks to its preposterous 1-9 record in one-score games. 

Considering they had previously won an NFL-record 17 consecutive one-score games heading into this year, it seems highly unlikely that they suddenly just forgot how to win close games. Record in one-score games tends to regress toward .500 over time, and if the Chiefs had just gone 5-5 in their one-score games this year, they would have finished 10-7. 

So long as Mahomes is healthy entering the 2026 season (which is admittedly in question after he tore his ACL late in the 2025 season), the Chiefs should show significant improvement in their win-loss record. 

Dallas Cowboys

I feel very badly about potentially talking myself into the Cowboys, but the one thing you have to remember is that this is about the regular season, not the playoffs. And the Cowboys could be well-positioned to show some significant regular-season improvement. 

For one thing, this was the first time ever that Dak Prescott has played in more than half the team's games and they still finished below .500. They had previously gone 13-3, 9-7, 10-6, 8-8, 11-5, 8-4 and 12-5 in his starts during his healthy seasons. Each of those would obviously be an improvement over the 7-9-1 campaign the Cowboys just had, and on average, they would be expected to win at least three more games than they did this past year.

The main reason they didn't win double-digit games in 2025 was because of their horrendous defense. After trading Micah Parsons shortly before the start of the season, Dallas had arguably the league's worst defense. The Cowboys should improve on that end thanks to the hiring of Christian Parker as their defensive coordinator, as well as the two first-round picks with which they have an opportunity to add talent on that side of the ball.

If they can get to even below-average on defense rather than disastrous, that should be worth a few wins, so long as they keep George Pickens around and retain one of the NFL's most explosive offenses.