Of the four major American sports leagues, the NFL is generally celebrated for having the most turnover among teams at the top. Every fan can go into the season with some hope because every team starts with a chance to win. That's even true for the teams that were in last place a year ago. Since the NFL realigned to eight four-team divisions in 2002, 22 teams have gone from worst to first. There has been at least one of these teams in every season except 2014 and 2019. (Although San Francisco went from 4-12 to first place, the 49ers weren't in last place in 2018 because Arizona was 3-13.)
We've gone through the eight teams that finished in last place in each division last season, ranked by their odds of winning their division in 2020. Instead of just using the simulation from our book Football Outsiders Almanac 2020, we've done a new simulation that accounts for player opt-outs due to COVID-19. Our system predicts each team's DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average, explained here) on offense, defense, and special teams using a number of variables, including performance over the past three years, coaching experience, and personnel changes. Then we simulate the season 25,000 times to get a wide range of possibilities that account for every team's best-case and worst-case scenario.
There are clear indicators that help guide us as to which teams are most likely to go worst to first. But remember that sometimes, teams will change and develop in ways we can't foresee and take a big step forward that is unexpected. This is probably even more of an issue in 2020 because of the unknown consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's safe to assume that the random loss of players due to infection during the season will even out talent across the league and make it more likely that a team can go from worst to first in one year.
Jump ahead to the most likely first-to-worst teams.
1. Detroit Lions
Odds of winning the NFC North: 27.5% (1st in division)
Odds of making playoffs: 42.9% (17th in NFL)
Here we go again. Detroit was our choice for the most likely team to go worst to first a year ago. They didn't manage to do it -- none of the 2018 last-place teams did -- and they didn't even come close. The Lions finished at 3-12-1. So why do we now list them not only as the most likely team to go worst to first in 2020 but also -- shockingly -- as the most likely team to win the NFC North overall?
There's two parts to this: The Lions on one hand, and their competition on the other. First, let's talk about the Lions. Detroit was two different teams last year: with and without Matthew Stafford at quarterback. In the eight games Stafford started, the Lions finished 3-4-1. In the eight games after Stafford was lost for the season with a back injury, the Lions were 0-8. It's reasonable to assume that the Lions will be closer to that first team with Stafford back in 2020. And Stafford ranked sixth in the league in Total QBR last year when he was healthy. Our projection system also likes the Detroit defense to improve after the unit ranked 28th in DVOA last season. The Lions added a good amount of free-agent talent, much of it from the No. 1 New England Patriots defense. They made up for trading away veteran cornerback Darius Slay by selecting the talented Jeff Okudah third overall in the draft. Combine the talent influx with a low turnover rate (something that strongly regresses towards the mean) and the Lions should be better on defense in 2020.
This doesn't mean we're projecting a great season from the Lions. Our mean projection for the Lions has them as a very average team. We're high on the Lions because our mean projections have every team in the NFC North as a very average team. All four teams win the division somewhere between 23% and 27% of our simulations. Green Bay wasn't as good as its 13-3 record last year and didn't do much to fill holes over the offseason. We also expect some regression from a defense that improved dramatically last season. Minnesota was hit by a number of important personnel losses, including Stefon Diggs, Everson Griffen, and most of their cornerbacks. Chicago doesn't look to be much different than it was a year ago. Someone is going to come out of this muddle with a division title, and we feel the Lions have as good a chance as anyone.
2. Arizona Cardinals
Odds of winning the NFC West: 20.8% (4th in division)
Odds of making playoffs: 44.4% (15th in NFL)
Here's the team with the best projection of last year's last-place finishers, although not the best chance to win its division. Arizona was already a better team than their 5-10-1 record showed. Our estimated wins metric, which takes a team's performance in specific DVOA splits to predict their record with average luck and schedule, had Arizona as much closer to a 7-9 quality team.
Arizona's offense finished 13th last year after ranking as one of the worst offenses we've ever tracked in 2018. Arizona had the third-largest year-to-year improvement on offense of any team since 1985. It's hard to imagine things won't be better with the addition of DeAndre Hopkins and Kyler Murray getting another year of NFL experience. Meanwhile, the defense is in line to reverse two straight years of decline, especially with a lot of added talent this offseason: from veterans such as De'Vondre Campbell and Devon Kennard as well as eighth overall draft selection Isaiah Simmons.
So why isn't Arizona our favorite to go worst to first? They play in the toughest division in the NFL, the NFC West. All four teams in the NFC West average more than 8 wins in our simulations, and all four teams are in the upper half of our DVOA projections. That's a lot of competition for the rising Cardinals.
3. Jacksonville Jaguars
Odds of winning the AFC South: 15.15% (4th in division)
Odds of making playoffs: 30.8% (26th in NFL)
Many prognosticators have the Jacksonville Jaguars as the worst team in the league this year. Somewhat surprisingly, we do not. We don't have them as a good team, but we don't have them at the very bottom of the league either.
The Jaguars ranked 24th in offensive DVOA in Gardner Minshew's rookie year. Most young quarterbacks improve in their second season, so it's hard to argue that the Jaguars will suddenly have the worst offense in the league. Defense is another story, and probably the unit where our projections differ most from conventional wisdom. The Jaguars have lost a lot of defensive talent over the past couple years, but it is still the case that teams that decline on defense as much as the Jaguars did last year tend to bounce back a little bit the following season.
Obviously, a statistical projection system can't account for a decision that the Jacksonville franchise may or may not have made to tank 2020 in an effort to get a top draft pick in 2021. But based solely on the players on the field and recent team performance, the Jaguars do not look like the worst team in the league in 2020. Just a run-of-the-mill bad team.
4. Miami Dolphins
Odds of winning the AFC East: 15.14% (4th in division)
Odds of making playoffs: 24.9% (29th in NFL)
Your opinion on Miami's chances to challenge for a postseason spot in 2020 is in some ways related to your opinion on late-season splits. Because Miami was a very different team in the second half of last season.
The Dolphins started out with a seven-game losing streak. During that period, Miami ranked 31st in the league in offensive DVOA, and their defensive rating would be the worst ever measured over the course of a full season. Then the Dolphins turned things around. They actually went 5-4 over their final nine games. Their offense ranked 17th in the league, and their defense improved to 30th, which is still terrible but nowhere near as terrible as it had been over the first seven games.
Miami fans will want to put a lot of weight on those final two months, but Football Outsiders research has shown that a team's performance over an entire year is more predictive than just its performance in the second half. Obviously, personnel changes matter, and the offense was horrid early on in part because of some very bad Josh Rosen games, but even Ryan Fitzpatrick was better in the second half than he was if we look at his season-long totals.
That's not to say there isn't room for optimism here. This is a team that's building intelligently -- Byron Jones and Kyle Van Noy are big additions -- and should improve on both sides of the ball. It's just not likely that the Dolphins will improve enough to make a playoff run in Brian Flores' second year as head coach. It looks a lot more like 2021 might be Miami's year.
5. Los Angeles Chargers
Odds of winning the AFC West: 15.12% (3rd in division)
Odds of making playoffs: 38.3% (20th in NFL)
In our original simulation, the Chargers were listed fourth ahead of Miami, but all those Patriots opt-outs improved Miami's chance of going from worst to first. In the new simulation, three teams (including Jacksonville) are essentially separated by a rounding error. The Chargers project to be the best of the three teams, but they play in a tougher division led by the defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs. That's why the Chargers have much better odds to make the playoffs if we include wild-card spots, but are listed here behind Miami and Jacksonville.
The biggest thing the Chargers have going for them is that we're expecting a nice rebound from their defense, which ranked eighth in the league in DVOA for 2018 but declined to 21st a year ago. Chris Harris, Linval Joseph, and Kenneth Murray are all important additions, and a full year of Derwin James will be huge. We also expect the Chargers to see their turnover rate rebound after it was low in 2019.
We end up with the Chargers' offense projecting to be a little bit below average, 23rd in the league, but there's a wide range of possibilities here. We don't even know at this point whether Tyrod Taylor or Justin Herbert will start the majority of games. The Chargers' offense will need to be as good as it can be in order for Los Angeles to challenge Kansas City for a division title.
6. Washington
Odds of winning the NFC East: 8.7% (4th in division)
Odds of making playoffs: 16.7% (31st in NFL)
Washington has the worst DVOA projection in the entire league. However, Washington comes out with a better chance to win its division than either Cincinnati or Carolina because the NFC East doesn't feature one of our top three teams, unlike the AFC North (with Baltimore) and the NFC South (with New Orleans).
Washington's terrible projection is primarily driven by the worst offensive projection in the league. And that, in turn, is driven by Dwayne Haskins' extremely poor performance last season, last in the league by both Total QBR and Football Outsiders DVOA. However, it is true that Haskins got better with each successive start. There have certainly been good NFL starting quarterbacks who were not very good as rookies, such as Jared Goff and Matthew Stafford, and Haskins can't be consigned to the trash pile after just seven starts. It's likely that Washington will have a bad offense, but it's not a guarantee.
On defense, we're projecting Washington to be average. But the pieces are here for a big jump forward by the defense. Washington will field a front four entirely made up of first-round picks, and if Montez Sweat starts over Ryan Kerrigan that front four will also be all under the age of 26. Washington's accumulation of first-round picks on the defensive line is similar to what San Francisco did before last year's big defensive jump forward, with Chase Young in the role of Nick Bosa. Of course, there have also been teams that have accumulated first-round defensive linemen and didn't take that step forward: the 2014 St. Louis Rams, for example, who went 6-10 with Michael Brockers, Aaron Donald and Robert Quinn. So like with Haskins' improvement, nothing is guaranteed.
7. Cincinnati Bengals
Odds of winning the AFC North: 7.8% (4th in division)
Odds of making playoffs: 22.8% (30th in NFL)
Joe Burrow looks like an extremely talented young quarterback and had a fantastic season for LSU a year ago. But quarterbacks who go No. 1 overall in the draft all look extremely talented when you look at their college performance. The past eight teams to select a quarterback No. 1 overall averaged 6.1 wins the following season. Burrow could be Andrew Luck, who led the Colts to an 11-5 record in 2012. But more likely, the Bengals will make only gradual improvements in Burrow's first year.
Compounding the question of how good Burrow can be in his first year is the Bengals' defense, which was lousy a year ago, 30th in DVOA. Despite the addition of what seems like the entire Minnesota Vikings cornerback unit, we're not predicting great improvements for the Bengals' defense in 2020. Cincinnati ranks 31st in our defensive projections.
Additionally making tougher for the Bengals to go from worst to first: They're in a difficult division. Baltimore was the top team in the league by DVOA last year and is projected as one of our top three teams this season. Pittsburgh should be much better with Ben Roethlisberger back, and Cleveland should improve this season as well.
8. Carolina Panthers
Odds of winning the NFC South: 3.9% (4th in division)
Odds of making playoffs: 14.0% (32nd in NFL)
Here's the team with our lowest win projection in Football Outsiders Almanac 2020. Carolina has the worst defensive projection, the worst special-teams projection, and the toughest projected schedule in the league.
It's the defense that really stands out as a problem. The offense, with Teddy Bridgewater now as the starting quarterback, probably will be better than it was last season. But the Panthers will be replacing the entire defensive line, two starting defensive backs, and linebacker Luke Kuechly, who was probably the best player in the history of the franchise. Carolina is depending on a lot of youth on defense in a year where there will be less practice time (and no preseason games) before we kick off the regular season.
Then there's the schedule. The other three teams in the NFC South all rank in the top dozen of our DVOA projections, with New Orleans at No. 1. The AFC West and NFC North aren't the strongest divisions in the league, but none of the teams is really a pushover. Of the other teams near the bottom of our projections, the only one on Carolina's schedule is Washington in Week 16.
Most likely first-to-worst teams
Every year, football reporters write about how NFL teams frequently turn things around and go from last place to first place in one year. It's a reason every fan can go into the season with some hope. But it goes the other way as well. There's a possibility that every team, even the defending Super Bowl champions, will crash and burn. It's not quite as common as teams going the other way from worst to first, but since the NFL realigned to eight four-team divisions in 2002, 18 teams have finished last in their division the year after a division title. Recent teams to have this tragedy befall them include the 2018 Jaguars, 2017 Texans, and 2016 Panthers.
We've gone through the eight teams that won their divisions last season, ranked by their odds of finishing last in their division this coming season. Instead of just using the simulation from our book Football Outsiders Almanac 2020, we've done a new simulation that accounts for player opt-outs due to COVID-19. Our system predicts each team's DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average, explained here) on offense, defense, and special teams using a number of variables, including performance over the past three years, coaching experience, and personnel changes. Then we simulate the season 25,000 times to get a wide range of possibilities that account for every team's best-case and worst-case scenario.
There are clear indicators that help guide us as to which teams are less likely to repeat as division champions. However, injuries are very unpredictable and will play a huge role in determining which teams fall from first place to last. (The most likely reason for every one of these teams to finish last is "the starting quarterback gets hurt.") This year, there's an extra factor that makes things even more unpredictable: We don't know which players will have to miss games because they come down with COVID-19 during the season. It's safe to assume that the random loss of players due to infection during the season will even out talent across the league and make it more likely that a team can go from worst to first in one year.
1. Houston Texans
Odds of finishing last in the AFC South: 28.2% (2nd in division)
Houston is the division winner most likely to fall back to last place because the Texans finished last season as the worst of the eight division winners. They were the only playoff team to be outscored by opponents during the year, and they ranked all the way down at 19th in Football Outsiders' DVOA ratings (they were 15th before they sat starters against Tennessee in the final week, but that still made them the lowest-rated playoff team). Houston finished the season 8-3 in one-score games and that performance in close games tends to heavily regress towards the mean from year to year.
Overall, our mean projection for the Texans isn't much different from how they played in 2019. We have their offense down slightly because of the loss of DeAndre Hopkins, but the additions of Brandin Cooks and Randall Cobb help make up for that loss. Overall, the issue is just that teams that play as well as Houston did last year finish last as often as they finish first. And usually, they don't finish either first or last.
2. San Francisco 49ers
Odds of finishing last in the NFC West: 25.7% (3rd in division)
There are two elements that contribute to San Francisco's relatively high probability of finishing last in the NFC West.
First is the Plexiglass Principle: the idea that teams that make a major improvement from one year to the next tend to fall back a bit in the third year. The 49ers are in line to hit the Plexiglass Principle hard. They are the first team in the history of our DVOA stats (back to 1985) that improved by 20% on both sides of the ball in the same year. Veteran losses such as DeForest Buckner and Emmanuel Sanders won't help the 49ers fight that strong probability of a reversion.
The other issue is the overall strength of the NFC West. Seattle has one of the best quarterbacks in the league, Los Angeles would have made the playoffs last year if the league had seven playoff teams per conference, and Arizona is a young team on the rise. The entire division finishes with an average winning record in our simulations. It's not a ridiculous notion that the 49ers could decline a little bit and combine that with a bit of bad luck and go 8-8 -- and finish last in the NFC West despite being an above-average team overall.
3. Green Bay Packers
Odds of finishing last in the NFC North: 24.2% (3rd in division)
The Packers were a good team last year, but they were a good team masquerading as a great team. The Packers had the second-lowest DVOA since 1985 for any team that finished 13-3, and finished 10th in the league. They had only 9.8 Pythagorean projected wins, based solely on points scored and allowed. Green Bay finished the regular season 8-1 in one-score games.
The Packers had some holes to fix this offseason, but they didn't sign any major free agents and they used their first three draft picks on:
a developmental quarterback
a running back, a position where they already had the excellent Aaron Jones
a tight end, a position that doesn't tend to contribute much as a rookie
The defense is probably a bigger issue than the offense. We're expecting some regression from a defense that improved significantly over 2018 and built its strong record in part thanks to a lot of games against backup quarterbacks such as Matt Moore and David Blough.
4. New England Patriots
Odds of finishing last in the AFC East: 14.4% (4th in division)
There's certainly a strong chance that the New England Patriots will not be as good in 2020 as they were in 2019. The problem here is less the loss of Tom Brady and more the loss of half the Patriots' defense. As we detail in Football Outsiders Almanac 2020, the Patriots had lost more defensive talent than any other team since at least 2003 as judged by Pro Football Reference's approximate value over replacement level. And that was before they lost two more defensive stalwarts, D'onta Hightower and Patrick Chung, who chose to opt out due to COVID-19. The Patriots are also in line for massive regression in their takeaway rate, as they led the league in interceptions per drive last season.
The gap between the Patriots and the top three teams in the odds of finishing last is all about the quality of their rivals, not the probability of the teams themselves collapsing in 2020. For example, the San Francisco 49ers have three strong division rivals. The Patriots and Eagles each have one. For the Patriots, their main competition is the Buffalo Bills. The Dolphins and Jets come in a lot lower in our season projections, with the Jets in particular falling even lower after the trade of Jamal Adams and the opt-out announcement from C.J. Mosley. Even if the Patriots' defense implodes and the offense isn't as good without Brady, it would be tough for New England to come in below both the Jets and the Dolphins.
5. Philadelphia Eagles
Odds of finishing last in the NFC East: 12.6% (3rd in division)
Our projections essentially have the Eagles most likely playing as the same team they were last year. They're a little bit above average on both offense and defense. Last year, the Eagles ranked 11th in total DVOA. In our current projections, they come out ninth.
Like the Patriots, it's the structure of the division that may do the most to keep Philadelphia out of last place. As in the AFC East, we have two NFC East teams (Dallas and Philadelphia) significantly ahead of the other two NFC East teams (Washington and the New York Giants). Even if the Eagles decline significantly, it is unlikely that they will fall into last place in the division.
6. Baltimore Ravens
Odds of finishing last in the AFC North: 7.5% (4th in division)
Now we get to the teams really unlikely to fall to last place. Our 2020 projections put three teams ahead of the rest of the league: Baltimore, Kansas City, and New Orleans. It would almost certainly take a major quarterback injury for one of these teams to plummet to the basement in its division. Baltimore, specifically, is boosted by an easy schedule, a good all-around projection including the league's best special teams, and the fact the Ravens would have to finish below the Cincinnati Bengals in order to finish fourth.
7. Kansas City Chiefs
Odds of finishing last in the AFC West: 6.8% (4th in division)
Kansas City has the best offensive projection in the league, and we saw last year when Patrick Mahomes went down that Andy Reid has the ability to scheme around his backup quarterbacks and win games with them. They come out ahead of the Saints in their odds of finishing last because the AFC West doesn't have any team that looks as bad as Carolina in the NFC South.
8. New Orleans Saints
Odds of finishing last in the NFC South: 4.6% (4th in division)
The Saints have a top-five projection on both sides of the ball. If the starting quarterback goes down, they now have one of the most accomplished backup quarterbacks in the league. They also have a good amount of depth on their defense. And it's going to be hard to finish last in the same division as the team we are projecting to finish with the fewest wins in the league, Carolina.