Barnwell
Green Bay Packers
My pick for 2025: In the playoffs (NFC North champions)
Just as I was beginning to finalize this column late last week, the Micah Parsons trade knocked the Cowboys out of my provisional playoff bracket and pushed the Packers ahead of their competition in the NFC North. As I mentioned in my reaction on the Parsons trade, the Packers weren't far off from the Lions a year ago, finishing one spot behind Dan Campbell's team in DVOA. The Packers are the youngest team in the league on a snap-weighted age basis, so there are plenty of potential breakout candidates on the roster.
If they were missing a bit of star power, they got all they needed with the addition of Parsons, who is one of the best defensive players in football. Assuming that Parsons doesn't miss significant time with his back issue, the Packers added the same player who made the Cowboys the best defense in the NFL when he was on the field and its worst when he wasn't. The Packers did so while subtracting just one player from the current roster in defensive tackle Kenny Clark.
The Packers aren't perfect, of course. Their run defense is suddenly a question mark after the departures of Clark and T.J. Slaton Jr. Jordan Love has been inconsistent, and while there are reasons to talk yourself into the guy we saw in the second half of 2023 and 2024 as the real Love, it's entirely possible we get another year with high highs and low lows from the 26-year-old signal-caller. If we get the post-Toyotathon version of Love for 17 games, though, the Packers could be the best team in the league. With some reservations about the Lions and Vikings, I'm pushing the Packers into first place in the NFC North.
Minnesota Vikings
My pick for 2025: Out of the playoffs
Vikings fans are sick of hearing about their record in one-score games, but when you go from 9-0 to 4-8 then to 8-1 across Kevin O'Connell's first three seasons in charge, it's going to be a significant part of the conversation. We know that's a meaningful predictor of what happens next, so it's tough to imagine the Vikings playing at the same level and getting the same results.
Can they keep up what we saw last season? A thrilling defense led the league in turnovers, as the Vikings jumped from 19th in turnover rate to second. That's difficult to sustain, especially with the Vikings turning over a chunk of their secondary. This was the oldest team in football on a snap-weighted age basis, and after adding several new starters in free agency and making only three top-100 picks over the past two years, it's tough to count on O'Connell's team getting dramatically younger this season.
One of the places where they will get younger, of course, is at quarterback, with J.J. McCarthy taking over as the starter after missing all of his rookie year with a knee injury. The Vikings invested heavily along the line of scrimmage this offseason, and they probably won't need to lean on their quarterback as much as they did on early downs with Sam Darnold and Kirk Cousins. But we just don't know whether McCarthy will be an upgrade on the passers who preceded him. My instinct is that he's something close, but instead, a defensive decline and a less fortunate year in one-score contests push the Vikings back toward the middle of the NFC pack.
Detroit Lions
My pick for 2025: In the playoffs (NFC wild card)
With my four division retainers already claimed, I was left with one of the four remaining winners to push into the playoffs as a wild-card team. Of those four, it seemed clear to pick the Lions, who could fall off from their 15-win season and still have plenty left in the tank to make it to the postseason. Despite losing just about every pass rusher and cornerback they had on the roster by the time the defense finally fell apart in the playoffs, an inspired effort from D-coordinator Aaron Glenn and an inspired offense fueled by coordinator Ben Johnson was enough to consistently get the Lions over the hump on a weekly basis. They dominated bad teams and reliably beat good ones.
The Lions should still be among the league's best teams, although they probably won't ride their luck to another 7-2 mark in one-score contests. The defense can't possibly be as injured as it was a year ago, but the offense was one of the league's healthiest, and there are real questions about the new-look interior of their O-line. It's tough to envision a scenario in which the Lions don't take some sort of hit after losing both Glenn and Johnson to head-coaching gigs. That could be just enough to open the door for one of the teams below them in the NFC North, although I won't spoil which one just yet.
That leaves me to project three 2024 division winners to miss the postseason entirely. Two of them defied that fate last season. Can they keep it up again?
Chicago Bears
My pick for 2025: In the playoffs (NFC wild card)
The Cowboys were going to be a wild-card team in the initial draft of these rankings, but after the Micah Parsons trade, they dropped out. And that opened a spot for the Bears. Like the 49ers and the Jaguars, Chicago is on this year's likely-to-improve list. Unlike the 49ers and the Jaguars, though, Chicago's quantitative case isn't quite as strong. The Bears were 3-7 in one-score games, which isn't ideal, but they weren't the most injured team, didn't play the toughest schedule in the league and weren't subject to many once-in-an-NFL-lifetime statistics.
What I think the Bears did do, though, is make a major coaching upgrade by going from Matt Eberflus and Thomas Brown to Ben Johnson. If that turns out to be the case and Johnson unlocks the best from Caleb Williams in the process, the Bears might have significantly improved performance from the two most important positions in football. I'm not sure there's enough in the tank to get them past the Lions and Packers, but with the Cowboys nobly sacrificing their best defensive player two weeks before the start of the season, I'm willing to believe the Bears sneak in as a wild card in 2025.
I'm against picketing but I don't know how to show it.
