28. Minnesota Vikings
I have to remember that many young quarterbacks in the NFL just do not look good, and my favorite team had a rookie QB in 2024. The growing pains of JJ McCarthy are obvious, but this might be too much for the second-year quarterback.
“Nine,” as he calls himself, has been a disaster this year and is, in some ways, a de-facto rookie. He missed the entire regular season due to a knee injury, so he entered 2025 already a year behind of schedule.
The other interesting thing here is that the Minnesota Vikings won 14 games last year and added a ton of talent this offseason, so they had clearly hoped to compete now. However, developing a young QB and also wanting to compete and win a ton of games doesn’t really compute.
This also does force the front office to make a huge QB decision in the offseason, unless McCarthy makes a huge turnaround, which feels very unlikely at this point in time.
27. Arizona Cardinals
The Arizona Cardinals had a chance, but they blew it in overtime and lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars, and this team, once encouraging after a 2-0 start, continues to collapse. Jacoby Brissett has been good for them and is someone they can bring back to start in 2026, as it seems like they want to move on from Kyler Murray.
However, there is no guarantee that the front office or coaching staff will be there in 2026 with how poorly this year has gone. The Cardinals have been out of the playoff picture for week now and really do not have much going for them at this point.
They came into this season fielding a much more talented defensive line, which was their primary weakness in 2025, so I was high on this team as a Wild Card squad, but I could not have been more wrong.
The Cardinals need some major changes to get back into the mix, and it could start with the QB change this coming offseason. Arizona continues to fall in our power rankings.