At long last, we're finally going to be able to start reacting to some actual games. The NFL preseason has officially come to an end, which means we're merely days away from the Kansas City Chiefs and Baltimore Ravens kicking off the 2024 regular season in an epic matchup of two MVP quarterbacks.
With everything that we've seen in the offseason and with the progression some teams may have shown in the preseason (if only glimpses), we're going to take one last crack at ranking all 32 NFL teams before the start of the season, if only to serve as a way to show us just how wrong we were at the end of the year.
The NFL is impossible but impossibly fun to predict. Let's take a look at our final NFL Power Rankings before the start of the 2024 season, ranking every team worst to best.
2024 NFL Power Rankings: Every team ranked worst to best after the preseason
32. Carolina Panthers
I’m not really buying what the Panthers are selling this offseason just yet. I love the Dave Canales hire for this franchise, especially after the disaster that Frank Reich and his staff ended up being. And is anyone still surprised by that?
All the talk last season was that the Panthers had built this super-staff under Reich, and now it’s been dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.
The obvious key for the Panthers this season is quarterback Bryce Young, who among other things has been getting clowned this offseason for looking like a 7th-grader. Ultimately, Young is not going to be getting made fun of if he can return to his peak Alabama form. The Panthers moved heaven and earth to make Young their quarterback, and they desperately need him to come through for them this season.
31. Las Vegas Raiders
The primary reason the Raiders are near the bottom of this list is the fact that I believe they have the worst quarterback situation in the entire league. There was a good amount of hype for Aidan O’Connell this offseason, but O’Connell pick-sixed his way to the pine during the Raiders’ preseason. Gardner Minshew is such a fascinating player, though.
Minshew was a late-round pick by the Jaguars, and has just looked really solid in about every opportunity he’s gotten, including helping lead the Colts to a winning record last year. But he’s going to have to do more for the Raiders than he had to do with the Colts, and unless the Raiders are swinging the pendulum significantly in one-score games, I think this team is going to have one of the worst records in the league.
30. Minnesota Vikings
The Minnesota Vikings have had one of the worst offseasons out of any team in the entire NFL. It hasn’t been all bad, of course, but at least when we’re looking ahead at the 2024 season, things could certainly be a lot better for Kevin O’Connell and company.
The Vikings lost rookie quarterback JJ McCarthy to a season-ending knee injury, which is more detrimental than disappointing. You want to see McCarthy play at some point in his rookie year, and that’s not going to happen now. The Vikings will be the Sam Darnold show all year, and obviously the best-case scenario there is for them to see something like what we saw from Baker Mayfield in Tampa Bay.
I wouldn’t be shocked if the Vikings have a rough year this year and rejuvenate excitement over the direction of the franchise next offseason with McCarthy coming back healthy.
29. New York Giants
I struggled not to put the Giants even lower on this list than they are. I really just don’t have any faith in Daniel Jones becoming the type of player the Giants seem to think he’s capable of being.
Jones’s showing in the preseason was brutal, and the Giants have a rough backup situation with Drew Lock. These two quarterbacks came into the NFL in the same rookie class back in 2019, and both guys have combined for about 800 total turnovers between the two of them.
All kidding aside, the Giants are a strange team to try and project this year because if Jones can limit the mistakes, they probably have a good enough roster to win 7 or 8 games. But if the Giants aren’t able to close the deal in one-score games, I see them winning 4 or 5 at most.
28. Tennessee Titans
If Will Levis can have a breakout year in 2024, there’s not much not to like about the Tennessee Titans. The loss of Derrick Henry is being supplemented by the addition of Tony Pollard from the Cowboys and the Titans perhaps adopting a little more of a pass-first identity under head coach Brian Callahan.
Callahan wants to spread the ball around to a variety of receivers, and the Titans certainly have that, even if they’re getting a little long in the tooth. Can the combination of DeAndre Hopkins, Calvin Ridley, and Tyler Boyd help take Levis’s game to the next level?
The Titans made a lot of moves this offseason to indicate they seriously believe they can compete in the AFC South, but will they be more of a trade deadline dump kind of roster? Time will tell.
27. New England Patriots
I’m not going to sit here and say that I love the Patriots’ offseason, because there’s a lot of change that could result in immediate negative results for the team. Losing Bill Belichick obviously is huge, but the Patriots also traded away their best defensive player (Matthew Judon) and moved on from a lot of other players.
But I honestly don’t hate the way that Jerod Mayo has been gutting the roster and the ruthless approach to getting rid of players who clearly don’t want to be there. Cutting JuJu Smith-Schuster and trading Judon were signs from Mayo that he’s building culture as much as anything, and that may take time. I like Drake Maye, I like the young receivers in New England, and I view this team as one that should be fun to watch this season even if their record is bad.
26. Washington Commanders
We’d have to go back and watch the tape on this one, but this might be the highest we’ve had the Commanders in any of our offseason NFL power rankings so far. Maybe.
The Commanders used the 2nd overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft on Heisman winning quarterback Jayden Daniels, who could end up immediately being one of the most dynamic dual-threat quarterbacks in the league. I’m not quite ready to say the Commanders could be this year’s version of the Colts from last year (when Anthony Richardson was healthy) but maybe…
The Commanders have one of the top defensive coordinators in the league in head coach Dan Quinn. When you combine Quinn’s defensive play-calling abilities with a dynamic quarterback like Jayden Daniels, you might have the recipe for a little overachieving.
Maybe…
25. Los Angeles Chargers
There are so many reasons I want to get hyped about the Chargers for this season. I love Jim Harbaugh as much as the next guy, and we know that he comes in and completely changes programs whether he’s at the NFL level or the college level. He’s done it at every stop.
And honestly, if you could change one thing about the Chargers in the Justin Herbert era, it would be coaching. If the Chargers had better coaching over the last handful of years, they probably would have been a much bigger threat in the AFC.
So why won’t they automatically be better with Harbaugh in the fold? There’s obviously a chance they could be, but this Chargers roster was gutted a bit, especially at the offensive skill positions. Herbert’s going to be asked to do a lot more. I could see them being one of the hottest teams in the second half of the season after a slow start.
24. Seattle Seahawks
I’ve gone back and forth on the Seattle Seahawks all offseason in terms of their overall projection. Ultimately, the floor with Geno Smith at the quarterback position seems like it could be five or six wins for Seattle. The ceiling feels like it’s about nine wins. Can this team be somewhere in between that? Can they compete for a playoff spot in the NFC?
Absolutely, but it’s going to require a huge jump from the Seattle defense.
And when you look at this unit on paper, it’s not impossible to project that. Seattle has talent all over the defensive backfield, and they also have invested a ton in the defensive line over the last two years (Dre’Mont Jones, Leonard Williams, Byron Murphy). With Michael Macdonald coming in as the head coach, they should be solid every week schematically as well.
With all the playmakers offensively, it’s really the quarterback that’s going to dictate the ceiling and floor of this team.
23. Arizona Cardinals
We saw some good things for the Arizona Cardinals last year in the first year of the Jonathan Gannon era. Gannon had his guys ready to play every single week, and that was with a roster that was pretty heavily criticized all throughout the course of the 2023 offseason.
And by heavily criticized, I mean by me.
I thought the Cardinals had the worst roster in the league last year and I didn’t think we’d see them be half as competitive as they ended up being, especially after they traded for Josh Dobbs basically right before the start of the season and named him the starter.
With Kyler Murray healthy and the talent on this team substantially upgraded, I like the Cardinals as a team to potentially be far better than expected.
22. Pittsburgh Steelers
We anticipate we’re going to see Russell Wilson win the quarterback “competition” for the Steelers despite a strong challenge from Justin Fields early on in training camp. Granted, Wilson wasn’t practicing due to a calf injury at that time, but still…
The Steelers have an attacking defense, great coaching, and an upgrade at the quarterback position. So why will this team potentially finish with a top 10-12 draft pick in 2025?
We’ve got to point to Russell Wilson, unfortunately. The Steelers definitely overachieved last year based on how bad their production was at the quarterback position. The issue with Russell Wilson is the fact that he has been so reliant upon his ability to break the pocket and make plays on scramble drill. He really struggled badly in Denver to keep the offense on schedule and we didn’t see them move the ball much until end-of-half situations.
If he’s inefficient in Pittsburgh, this team might only win 6 or 7 games.
21. New Orleans Saints
Similar to my issues with the Steelers, I just feel like there is a much lower floor with the Saints this year after overachieving a little bit last year. Is there a chance that the Saints – like the Steelers – could scrape and claw their way to 9 or 10 wins?
Sure, we saw it happen last year.
I can’t help but wonder whether Derek Carr is really a viable franchise player at the position and if we’re going to see some type of implosion from the New Orleans offense this year. It feels like Dennis Allen is on the hot seat, and that offensive line in New Orleans could be this team’s Achilles heel over the course of a 17-game season.
20. Indianapolis Colts
There’s a lot to like about the Indianapolis Colts as we approach the 2024 regular season. With Anthony Richardson at the quarterback position, the Colts have arguably the single biggest anomaly under center in the entire league. Richardson is like a create-a-player in a video game. He’s just got such special talent, and we saw a glimpse last year of how Shane Steichen plans to unearth every ounce of it.
The Colts also have built a pretty strong defense personnel-wise, and there’s just again – a lot to like about this overall roster.
So what’s going to hold them back? There is still some high variance in the potential outcomes for Richardson this season. The Colts could legitimately win the AFC South if he plays up to his potential, but if he struggles, they could be picking in the top 10 of next year’s draft.
19. Denver Broncos
The offseason prognosis for the Denver Broncos has not exactly shined a very favorable light on this team. The Broncos have been clowned all offseason for taking a big dead cap hit after cutting Russell Wilson, trading Jerry Jeudy, and releasing Justin Simmons.
Many in the NFL world seem to think this team is going to be an absolute joke in 2024, but head coach Sean Payton loves his roster and loves his new franchise QB – Bo Nix. Nix was just named the starter for the Broncos and was arguably the best rookie QB of the entire 2024 class throughout the course of the preseason.
Nix looks like he’s going to give the Broncos a legit upgrade at QB this year. For a team that won eight games last year, the arrow could actually be pointing up.
18. Chicago Bears
How can you not be a little excited about the Chicago Bears?
Bears general manager Ryan Poles may have been gifted a mulligan with the #1 overall pick in the NFL Draft after trading it away last year, but he’s made good on the picks he’s been working with and the Bears have a lot going for them right now.
Caleb Williams is going to eventually be a stud. We saw some good and some bad in the preseason, as you would expect from a rookie, but the high moments were just breathtaking. Williams has elite receivers and playmakers at his disposal, and a defense that is going to get him a lot of opportunities with the ball.
The Bears’ ascent defensively is a major development for the team as a whole, and that could be the best area of this team in 2024.
17. Jacksonville Jaguars
The Jacksonville Jaguars are probably better than the 17th-best team in the NFL right now, but they have a lot of work to do in terms of just getting the sour taste out of everyone’s mouth from last season. The Jaguars started off the year 8-3 and managed to somehow completely miss the playoffs after that.
We had a combination of defensive collapse as well as Trevor Lawrence dealing with an injury, and it was an ugly end to the season, paving way for the Houston Texans to sort of hijack the Jaguars’ hype train in the AFC South.
A healthy, well-paid Lawrence has a lot of new weapons, and the Jaguars are going to have a new defensive scheme under coordinator Ryan Nielsen. I think there are a variety of reasons to expect this team to return to the playoffs in 2024.
16. Atlanta Falcons
I’m sorry to say this and be immediately negative about the Falcons, but what is the deal with Michael Penix Jr. not playing in the preseason?
I mean, honestly. This is one of the dumbest ways I’ve ever seen an NFL team handle a rookie quarterback. Even if the Falcons were spooked by what happened in Minnesota with JJ McCarthy, it’s inexcusable that he didn’t get many “real” game reps. Even after hearing Raheem Morris sort of explain it, it still doesn’t make sense.
Why can Patrick Mahomes play in the preseason and not Michael Penix?
The Falcons could be pretty darn good this year, regardless. I’m still shocked they were able to add both Matthew Judon and Justin Simmons in a matter of less than 24 hours during the month of August. That’s how you add to a roster. Those two pickups have shifted my overall projection of the Falcons. I see a 10-win team if Kirk Cousins stays healthy.
15. Los Angeles Rams
My feelings on the Los Angeles Rams have cooled ever so slightly over the last handful of weeks. If Matthew Stafford struggles with his health at all this coming season, it could be disastrous for the Rams. But if Stafford can stay healthy, this team could make it to the final four in the NFC.
Aside from the question marks over Stafford’s health, the Rams did lose Aaron Donald to retirement this offseason. I think it’s been a little too easy to just blow over that little detail.
Without Aaron Donald, the Rams are going to have to get the job done defensively by a committee approach, and that loss will certainly be felt throughout the course of the season. The Rams don’t strike me as a team that’s going to bottom out with 3 or 4 wins, by any means, but 7-10 wins feels like a pretty safe range. And I still tend to lean on the 9-10 wins for Sean McVay’s crew.
14. Cleveland Browns
The good news for the Cleveland Browns is that their defense is going to be outstanding yet again this season. And that Cleveland defense is going to keep this team in one-score games more often than not. But the fact that this team won 11 games last year with the ghost of Joe Flacco having the comeback of a lifetime only serves to help everyone ignore the fact that the Deshaun Watson trade has been arguably the worst in NFL history.
Considering the Broncos already moved on from Russell Wilson this offseason, that’s saying something.
Watson has once again been dealing with injury issues throughout training camp and the preseason, and we didn’t get to see any of him in the preseason. I am just not buying that Watson is going to be great again. Maybe he will be. But if Watson turns out to be the type of guy the Browns are paying him to be, I’ll have to eat some crow. He’s a liability for them in so many different ways.
13. Buffalo Bills
Despite all of the roster turnover for the Buffalo Bills this offseason, nobody in the NFL world is going to be letting Josh Allen off the hook.
The pressure on Allen is arguably as high as it’s ever been despite the fact that the Bills just flat-out moved on from his top two receivers (Stefon Diggs, Gabe Davis) and revamped the defensive backfield this offseason.
The injury to Matt Milano is another big blow to this Buffalo roster, but I still view this as one of the top teams in the entire AFC and I think we’re going to see Allen play better than ever in 2024. He’s got some new weapons, to be sure. The Buffalo defense definitely has some question marks. But we may see a lot of addition by subtraction in Buffalo in 2024.
12. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
The football gods dealt Baker Mayfield a really good hand when he landed in Tampa Bay last offseason. Mayfield parlayed a disastrous situation, getting traded by Cleveland to Carolina and then getting cut and landing with the Rams, into taking over Tom Brady’s job with a team that won the Super Bowl within the last handful of years.
And to Mayfield’s credit, he’s taken the job and is running with it. I don’t want to be fooled by the preseason any more than any of you, but Mayfield’s final tune-up of the preseason against the Miami Dolphins looked really good, didn’t it? He had 54 yards passing on three pass attempts with three completions, and led a touchdown drive.
It was pretty much the perfect way for Mayfield to end the preseason and the Bucs have to be feeling confident with their roster. Jason Licht has done a great job of retaining key guys and keeping the core of this team intact.
11. New York Jets
I’m not going to sit here and say that I think the Jets are going to be bad this season, but I’m being a bit more cautious in my approach to projecting this team than others. There are many out there who seem to believe that we’re going to get the 2020-21 version of Aaron Rodgers out there this season.
And hey, if that happens – the Jets are going to probably be playing for the right to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl this coming season. But let’s consider a couple of facts that can’t be ignored at this point.
Aaron Rodgers is north of 40 years old. Aaron Rodgers is north of 40 years old and is coming off of one of the worst possible injuries any football player can suffer (Achilles). Even before Aaron Rodgers was north of 40 years old and coming off of one of the worst possible injuries you can suffer as a football player, he wasn’t that great when we last saw him (which was in 2022 as a member of the Packers).
Rodgers is the catalyst for this team, and the Jets are obviously banking on him playing at an elite level. They have all of the rest of the pieces in place, it seems. Except for Haason Reddick, of course.
10. Green Bay Packers
The Packers are a team I’m extremely high on for this upcoming season. I know you can’t exactly just take the momentum from one season to the next, but this is a team that finished so well last season. The only thing that prevented the Packers from making it to the NFC Championship Game was their rookie kicker.
The emergence of this young Packers roster in 2023 was really fun to watch, and the progression of Jordan Love had to feel good for GM Brian Gutekunst and head coach Matt LaFleur, who received a ton of criticism for the way they handled Aaron Rodgers and his situation.
The Packers might be a little more high variance in terms of their potential outcomes for this season, but they are talented on both sides of the ball and they should be much better defensively under new coordinator Jeff Hafley than we saw last year from Joe Barry.
9. Philadelphia Eagles
The Philadelphia Eagles were able to win as many games as they did last year with Jalen Hurts turning the ball over at as high of a rate as we’ve ever seen from him, and the defense playing incredibly bad under first-year coordinator Sean Desai.
Well, the Eagles are banking on Hurts not turning the ball over at as high of a rate as we’ve ever seen, and they also brought in Vic Fangio to coach up a new-look defense. We can’t discount the concern we have right now over the fact that the Eagles lost Jason Kelce and Fletcher Cox in the same offseason, but there is still plenty of reason to love this team for 2024.
Philadelphia’s offensive skill talent is outrageous, and if Fangio can get that defense back into the top 16 (at least), this team is winning 11 or 12 games.
8. Cincinnati Bengals
It’s easy to forget because of the way last season went for this Bengals team, but this is one of the few teams that might be a legitimate challenger to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC when all is said and done this season.
There are some question marks holding back projections of Kansas City’s demise, however. We all want to see whether or not Joe Burrow is going to return to peak form. We all want to see how the friction between a number of players and the front office is going to play out. And we have to see how well the Bengals play offensively after the departure of offensive coordinator Brian Callahan.
There’s a lot of talent on this roster, and if the Bengals stay healthy, they’re going to be in the mix late into January.
7. Dallas Cowboys
And all of the readers threw the red challenge flag when they saw the Dallas Cowboys listed as the 7th-best team in the NFL right now.
How can this possibly be?
The Cowboys lost so much this offseason, starting with defensive coordinator Dan Quinn and a host of players who followed him to Washington to play for the Commanders. Not only that, but the Cowboys have contract issues right now with their two best players – Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb.
How are they possibly going to remain one of the best teams in the NFC? Call it a gut feeling, but I just feel as though the Cowboys are going to do more with less this year. They were such a good regular season team the last handful of seasons, and while they may take a slight step back in the regular season this year, I think Dak Prescott is going to be on a mission to prove he’s not a con artist in the playoffs.
6. Miami Dolphins
It’s going to be hard to stop the Miami Dolphins’ offense yet again in 2024. I’m not sure that we’re going to see Mike McDaniel’s crew score 70 points in a game again, but they are going to absolutely boat-race a number of teams, especially early on in the season.
The question marks with the Dolphins are defensively and how this team will do over the course of the long haul of the season. Are they still going to be able to maintain their offensive dominance late in the season with road trips to Buffalo and Green Bay after the start of November?
Defensively, will we see key players like Bradley Chubb and Jaelan Phillips be able to bounce back from devastating injuries? The Dolphins are very good on paper, and even after losing Vic Fangio in the offseason, this team could contend with the Chiefs in the AFC. They can outscore anybody, but can they do it when it matters?
5. Houston Texans
Well, if the Texans stink in 2024, there’s nobody that I know of who is going to be able to say “I told you so!”
Pretty much everyone has jumped aboard the Houston Texans bandwagon after what we saw last year and into the 2024 offseason. General manager Nick Caserio has been ultra-aggressive in surrounding CJ Stroud since discovering his new franchise quarterback, and the Texans just have so many good pieces all over their roster.
Perhaps the biggest sign of the job Caserio has done in Houston is the decision to re-sign Nico Collins to a big-money contract. Collins went from a potential trade dump player to a cornerstone piece of the franchise. Houston is loaded on both sides of the ball and DeMeco Ryans has a lot of great pieces to work with on the defense. Adding Danielle Hunter to pair with Will Anderson Jr. off the edge is just unfair.
4. Baltimore Ravens
What do we need to see from the Baltimore Ravens this coming season? Well, we need them to prove that they’re not the AFC’s version of the Dallas Cowboys.
Ouch.
The Ravens steamrolled through the regular season in 2023 only to completely let everyone down who was hoping to see somebody, anybody derail the Kansas City Chiefs in the playoffs. They get to open up their 2024 season with a road trip to Kansas City to hopefully get the year off to a great start, and they’re going to do it with what should be one of the most difficult backfields to deal with in the entire league.
Derrick Henry joining this Ravens team was one of the most fun moves of the entire NFL offseason, but is that going to be enough to push this team over the Kansas City-sized hump in the playoffs?
3. Detroit Lions
The Detroit Lions have all of the pieces in place to make it to the Super Bowl and represent the NFC in 2024. Heck, they had those pieces in 2023 as well. This Detroit team has been effectively transformed from an annual embarrassment to a legitimate powerhouse in the NFC North.
What weaknesses are there on this roster? The Lions have an elite offensive line and top-tier skill players on that side of the ball. They have substantially upgraded their defense over the last six months. They have continuity on the coaching staff.
Again, all the pieces are in place. It’s going to come down to this team taking care of business in the regular season and not looking too far ahead. They are going to have more competition in their own division this year from both the Packers and Bears, and things can obviously go in any direction in the playoffs.
The Lions are ready to contend and they’re one of just a couple of teams that I legitimately think could beat the Chiefs on the game’s biggest stage…if they can get there.
2. San Francisco 49ers
Unless the 49ers end up trading Brandon Aiyuk before the start of the season, which feels unlikely at this point, it’s hard to view what they’ve done this offseason as anything but a net positive. Obviously, just like any team, the 49ers are dealing with some key losses on either side of the football. But for a team this talented to maintain this much continuity?
It’s shaping up to be another special year for Kyle Shanahan and company.
If Kyle Shanahan doesn’t win a Super Bowl as an NFL head coach, it will be one of the biggest travesties in league history. What Shanahan does with personnel and scheming offensively is legendary. He has arguably the best collection of offensive skill talent in the entire NFL. There’s really no reason why the 49ers shouldn’t win the Super Bowl this year unless they croak on the game’s big stage again.
1. Kansas City Chiefs
We all know the Chiefs are the best team in the NFL until proven otherwise. Is there any reason to rank them lower than this unless it’s just for attention? The Chiefs gave more work to Patrick Mahomes in the preseason than we saw from the Falcons and Michael Penix Jr.
Seriously, why was Michael Penix Jr. not playing in the preseason?
The Chiefs are the most well-oiled machine in the NFL right now thanks to their continuity at key positions. Yes, they’re going to have to overcome the loss of players like L’Jarius Sneed and Willie Gay Jr. (among others), but for the most part, this team remains intact from the one that we just saw win back-to-back Super Bowls.
Can they pull off the impossible and win three in a row? I don’t see any real reason why not. The Chiefs have the best quarterback in the league, the NFL’s version of Michael Jordan. There’s just no way you can count them out. You have to pencil them in to finish at least in the AFC Championship game, and more likely than not, the Chiefs are going to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Poles as Ryan Pace.